


Quid Pro Quo

by Dira Sudis (dsudis)



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Bathing/Washing, Ciri Has Two Dads, First Time, Hand Feeding, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Multiple Orgasms, Power Imbalance, Relationship Negotiation, Strategy & Tactics, witcher family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-23
Updated: 2019-04-26
Packaged: 2020-01-24 06:52:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 25,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18566200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dsudis/pseuds/Dira%20Sudis
Summary: The only thing he isn't wrong about is how easily Emhyr var Emreis could destroy him if he chose to. Geralt has already left him far too many openings.In which Geralt has the Wrong Idea, Emhyr has Plans, and Cirilla has (At Least) Two Dads and isn't giving up on them.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Many, many thanks to templemarker for beta, to Quarra for reading this practically as fast as I wrote it and cheering me on, and to xantissa for further advice and input! :D
> 
> If you have questions about the tags or a suggestion about something I missed tagging, feel free to get in touch! My contact information is in my AO3 profile.

After decades on the Path, most of the monsters Geralt encounters are much like monsters he's seen before. One of the keys to surviving those decades has been to react quickly and decisively to threats; when he sees nekkers bearing down on him, he doesn't waste time wondering whether they might be different from every other nekker he's ever seen. He simply launches the same sort of attack that has worked before.

That's his only shred of an excuse for how badly he misreads things with Emhyr--because the only thing he isn't wrong about is how easily Emhyr var Emreis could destroy him if he chose to. Geralt has already left him far too many openings.

He's been in Nilfgaard for a few weeks, the night when he gets everything wrong. It's not his first visit; he'd stayed nearly a month when Ciri first traveled there, making sure that she was safe and settled as a princess. He'd been uncertain, the entire time, whether he was there to discourage her from changing her mind and taking to the Path, or if he lingered because he was waiting for her to do exactly that.

But eventually Yennefer's patience with his time away from her had begun to grow thin, and Ciri had opened a portal and sent him back to the love of his life. And after some uninterrupted time together, well, that had gone about as well as Geralt probably should have expected it to, given what their love--and their lives--had been so far.

After Yen sent him away--seeming as sure as Geralt was that this was the last time, although much less bewildered than he was by that fact--Geralt had spent some time out on the Path. Killing monsters still made sense, at least. One sword or the other sorted everything right out.

And if he scrupulously avoided all his friends--if there was one particular friend who he kept most careful track of in order to avoid him most effectively--well, Geralt had a lot to deal with. The love of his life... wasn't, anymore, and he likely still had a hell of a lot of life ahead of him, and no idea who he might spend it with. He needed some time to get used to the idea, and killing monsters always helped him feel like he knew what the hell he was doing.

He'd been at it for a few months when Ciri appeared at his side as he was trudging down a road in the middle of fuck-knew-where. He was leading Roach, because she'd started favoring her left foreleg an hour earlier, and Geralt didn't want to aggravate the injury before he found somewhere to make camp and check it properly.

"I heard two months ago," Ciri announced without looking at him, just stretching her legs to match his stride. 

She was dressed much like he was, in leathers and armor, a sword on her back, her ashen hair in a long neat braid. It took Geralt a second look to notice how fine and perfect her clothes and gear were; even her hair was better-behaved than it used to be. He felt as glad to see her as always, a sudden startling burst of joy in the midst of the grayness his days had become.

That almost instantly faded into worrying in several directions at once, but he only replied to her words with a not-totally-discouraging grunt, studying her out of the corner of his eye. She didn't _look_ like she meant to be on the road for long, but it wasn't as if that meant anything, with Ciri, since she could shorten any road to the length of a stride; and, judging from her new gear, she could afford to outfit herself however and whenever she liked.

"Not from Yen," Ciri went on. "She's not speaking to me, which is fine because I'm not speaking to her either. Everyone says she's the one who threw you out, not the other way around."

Geralt grimaced, shrugging one shoulder. The memory hadn't dimmed, exactly, but the pain was something he'd gotten used to working around, and the shock had long since faded. He still didn't understand why it had gone the way it did, but understanding was a lot to ask for when it came to Yen. "She gave me a choice. I made it."

Ciri said nothing for a while longer, and then, "I thought you'd come back to me, if you weren't with her, at least to let me know. Or I thought you would send a message; I didn't give you my courier seal for a memento. Or I thought you'd go to Corvo Bianco. I looked for you there."

Geralt nodded agreement to those statements of fact, since she hadn't asked him a question: he did not doubt that Ciri had looked for him at his fancy villa on his fancy vineyard in Toussaint. He knew she had given him her personal seal so that Nilfgaardian couriers would carry messages from him to her as swiftly and securely as possible, including transmitting the contents by megascope if he marked the message with the right codes. 

He had not made himself easy to find, and he had not sent a message to tell her anything at all in the last few months. He hadn't even let Nilfgaardian couriers catch sight of him on the road; he knew couriers carried their own observations as much as the messages entrusted to them, and he hadn't wanted them to have observations of him to report. 

Ciri had been so happy, sending him back to Yennefer. She'd thought he was safely settled in a new life off the Path, just like she was.

"Geralt," she said finally, stopping there in the middle of the road. "Come on. Stop this. Come _home_." 

He stopped too, a couple of strides later, and turned to stare at her, letting her see that she'd surprised him with that last, and that he had no idea what to say to it.

"Anywhere I have a hearth is a home for you," Ciri said, like it was something he should have known. "Anywhere I have a roof, or a fire, or a loaf of bread, a _crust_ , you have to know--"

Geralt raised a hand to hush her before she worked up to any more alarmingly impassioned declarations. "It's not like I thought you wouldn't let me stay if I turned up, Ciri. I just..."

Geralt looked at the road under his worn, dusty boots, and at Roach, standing patiently on three legs, thinner than she should be after being ridden hard all over the North in the last few months. He realized that he was, in fact, tired of this--much too tired to defend his choice to anyone, let alone Ciri.

"Kaer Morhen used to be home," Ciri said softly, coming a half-step closer. "Not just when we lived there--for so long, it was the place you always went back to. You told me that."

Geralt nodded. It was no wonder he'd found himself there, when he returned to the world; he was just lucky that he'd been found by--

Geralt cut that thought off. He still wasn't ready to think too much about Eskel, even if it seemed like every memory led back to him somehow. Not for the first time recently, Geralt found himself a little nostalgic for the straightforwardness of total amnesia. 

"And it can't be your home, now," Ciri went on softly. "You thought it was going to be with Yen. It could be Corvo Bianco, maybe, but I know you well enough to know you'll never feel at home away from the people you care about. That villa won't ever be home unless you have someone to share it with."

Geralt finally met her eyes, and let her say softly, "But it could be Nilfgaard. It could be me. Couldn't it?"

Geralt blew out a breath and nodded, offering Ciri his free hand, and wrapped Roach's reins more firmly around the other. 

Ciri smiled, and held onto his hand while she opened a portal for them. Roach huffed and flattened her ears, side-stepping a little, but she was too tired to express her displeasure beyond that. She let Geralt lead her through after Ciri, into the sunlit summer warmth of the palace stableyard in Nilfgaard.

People were awaiting them: a groom and an older man in cleaner clothes, probably some sort of stablemaster, stepped forward at once to take charge of Roach. Two women, one dressed like Ciri but less armored, another in a flowing gown, were waiting to collect Ciri. A footman stood by, probably there for Geralt just as the groom was there for Roach: to see him fed, watered, cleaned up, and put away.

They were all as irrelevant as fireflies when he saw Ciri look up and followed her gaze to an arcaded walkway above the stableyard, and the people walking there. All of them were focused on the Emperor, but Emhyr was looking past them, returning Ciri's attention. Maybe, Geralt thought for a dislocated second, returning Geralt's. 

Then Emhyr turned away and walked on, evidently satisfied with what he'd seen, and Geralt let the palace swallow him up.

* * *

He has the same rooms as he did the first time; he suspects that they were kept just for him, cleaned and aired but never occupied by any other guest in his absence. He's not sure what to think of that, exactly, but it's clear that Ciri meant what she said. She wants him to have a home here.

Geralt spends his first day or two sleeping, and by the time he's up and around again the idea has begun to take root. He won't stay here always, of course--probably not even whole winters as he used to at Kaer Morhen. But there's a different kind of pin in his mental map now, not just _Ciri_ but an anchor for himself, something he knows he'll return to.

There's not much going on by Nilfgaardian standards, which is to say that the place is like an entire palace built of beehives, constantly buzzing with purpose in all directions. But no one's actively trying to kill Ciri or Emhyr, the Imperial armies don't look to be gearing up for another invasion, and Emhyr's abdication and Ciri's subsequent coronation have been tentatively set for a year or so in the future. 

Ciri's working hard at her apprenticeship to the throne, and what's better, she _has_ to work hard at it. She's impressed by Emhyr--not his Majestic Imperialness or his wealth or any of that bullshit, thankfully, but, "I think sometimes he holds the entire _Empire_ in his head, Geralt. Not just a map, not even just the military--trade, and crops, and taxes, and roads, and all the nobles and all their conflicts and alliances, and every time I think I'm starting to get a grip on it, he shows me some whole other layer to everything!" 

It might sound despairing, if Geralt didn't know that Ciri's worst trouble in settling to anything had always been that she got a grip on it and then got _bored_.

Ciri has training time built into her days, so that she won't get too restless to listen or read after too many hours in a row. Today it's sword training; usually she spars with the officers of the Imperial Guard, but today she's insisted on Geralt joining them. That means he's sparring with her and the officers are pretending not to stare while they get on with their own training.

This whole princess thing is working out for her, Geralt can see; she's in good form with her sword work and in every other way he can gauge. She's building a life for herself, making Emhyr's plans for her fit the person she actually grew up to be while Emhyr wasn't looking. 

Geralt _does_ get bored, though he does his best not to. He visits Roach, and once she's had a few days' rest he takes her out for rides around the palace grounds and in the miniature forests dotted through the city--because apparently Nilfgaardians have to go so far to find actual wilderness, and it's such a novelty, that they've built their own imitations of it. There are a few places where a wide well-beaten track allows him to give Roach a decent gallop, if he circles around and around instead of actually going anywhere. That seems to be what visiting Nilfgaard is all about, so he tries not to dwell on it.

He works on keeping himself in condition, as well as Roach; at some point he's going to leave here and get back to earning his living, and he can't let himself go soft. He practices the forms in his rooms, since there's enough space to do it without destroying anything and he'd rather not invite more eyes on him than he has to. He does go to the training yard at the hours when it's less crowded, and of course whenever Ciri is there.

The training yard is one of the few places he actually gets to see her with any regularity, though even that isn't every day. Ciri spends most of her time with Emhyr, which of course is what she's here for, and when the two of them aren't doing secret Imperial business, there are endless formal occasions for her to attend in her official capacity as Crown Princess. Those occupy most of her evenings and nights, and some entire days.

Still, he's gotten to have a little time with just her--a few late suppers alone, and once she came to his room at midnight, slightly drunk and still wearing some sort of elaborate gown. Ciri perched on the end of the bed, talking and plucking pins out of her braided hair, until she fell asleep halfway to dawn. He moved her to a comfortable position and meditated until one of her ladies--Julena, the one who wears trousers anytime Ciri does, and watches sword training like she's memorizing it--came looking for her. 

There have been a few other nights when she's asked him to come have dinner, or late drinks, with her and Emhyr; he does, because it's not like some stupid grand party, and because honestly he'd go to the stupid grand parties if Ciri asked him to. He's already taking at least one bath every day and mostly wearing the Nilfgaardian clothes that keep appearing in his rooms; after the first week he even shaved-- _himself_ \--without wasting much time pretending that it was because his beard didn't suit the heat of a Nilfgaardian summer, rather than because of the way people's superior gazes at him flick sideways to Ciri when they're together.

It's strange, being alone in a room with her and Emhyr in what is clearly, for all its alien luxury, their home, where they get as close as they ever do to just being people. It's even stranger to see that it's _not_ strange to Ciri; she's had enough time to get used to seeing Emhyr as a man with a job--which, Geralt supposes, is probably something most people wouldn't be able to imagine witchers being, either.

Still, Geralt doesn't say much at those little gatherings. It's not that he wants to crush Ciri's obvious hope that he and Emhyr can both be family to her at the same time, in the same room, despite one of them being the Emperor of Nilfgaard and the other not owning a single suit of clothes he can wear in public without embarrassing her in Nilfgaard. 

It's just that seeing Emhyr like this makes him a stranger all over again, and getting friendly with this stranger-who-isn't is a problem Geralt has no plan of attack for. Even worse, he knows he doesn't dare be _too_ friendly, and has no idea where exactly the line might be. Geralt thinks he might even be starting to like the guy Emhyr seems to be in those hours, which doesn't make it any easier to guess. 

Nor does the way Emhyr's gaze lingers on him, the first time he turns up dressed entirely in new clothes, clean-shaven.

So Geralt talks to Ciri, and listens to Emhyr talk to Ciri, and tells himself that either he'll figure out how to go on here, or the time will come for him to leave.

He doesn't think too much about which is likely to happen first. He sleeps most nights instead of meditating, because he has all this time, and a really nice bed, to fill. He has no idea what he's doing in Nilfgaard other than being one less thing for Ciri to worry about, and seeing her for an hour here and there. He supposes he wouldn't have been any more use to anyone if he were still spending most of his time keeping Yen satisfied--well, he'd have been of use to Yen, at least.

He hopes she doesn't miss him. He doesn't miss her, exactly, not in the way he'd miss anyone else he cared about if he thought he'd never see them again. Not the way he used to, when something more than their own love and desire bound them to each other--so maybe what was between them was always more the curse, and less himself and Yen, than he ever wanted to believe. He misses the certainty, and the sex, but he doesn't find himself wanting to tell her things, to share every absurd discovery he makes about his decadent new life in Nilfgaard.

He thinks, _I've got to tell Eskel about that_ , half a dozen times a day. But that's no different from any other time he's been away from Eskel, and they've spent a hell of a lot more of their lives apart than together, so that's nothing new. It's not even something he should notice. He probably wouldn't, if he didn't have so much idle time and nothing to fill it.

Geralt considers spending some of his vast quantity of free time figuring out how a stray witcher goes about getting laid in Nilfgaard, but he's not at all sure he has the lay of the land well enough for that.

He's confident he could find a whorehouse readily enough, or even a woman in the palace--a servant, a lady in some variety of waiting--willing to be charmed by the future Empress's barbaric foster father. What he has no idea of is how such an encounter would get back to Ciri. He has no desire to be an embarrassment to her, or a weak point, and he has no doubt he'd manage to fuck up some of the arcane rules of fucking Nilfgaardians. 

When he thinks about it, he realizes that it would be even more complicated than just finding someone to fuck without reflecting badly on Ciri. He's the only witcher in Nilfgaard, and most of Nilfgaard must have heard some version of the tale of him and Ciri by now. Geralt is pretty hard to mistake for anyone else, and people see him now as a lot more than just the White Wolf. Who could he sleep with who wouldn't be angling for something from Ciri through him? How could he ever be sure?

Once he's started thinking about it, and with nothing at all to distract him, he can't _stop_. He starts spending a lot of time in his bed and taking extra baths for entirely different reasons than he did before. He's stopped judging the threat level of every person he encounters, because he can't stop being distracted by the thought of what they'd be like in bed. 

Sharing the training yard with the guard officers while he spars with Ciri becomes downright dangerous and therefore his favorite part of the day. A few of them have started asking to spar with him, and Ciri's branched out again to test herself against them, so between and during bouts Geralt has a whole crowd of men to watch exerting themselves, studying their movements and thinking about how they'd fuck.

He starts to imagine that he can tell what they'd be like, though he knows better. That one would be tender, that one rough. That one would push back against his advances and struggle with him for dominance; that one would go pliant at once. That one--

That one, Geralt realizes, one particularly mortifying day when he's spent several seconds between bouts watching the back of one particular swordsman without seeing anything higher than his sturdy shoulders or lower than his arse, is Emhyr var Emreis, getting in some sword practice of his own with his officers and Ciri. Geralt doesn't even bother to stop looking, or to try not to think of it, at least for the length of Emhyr's bout. 

It's not the first time it's ever crossed his mind; Emhyr's aura of power is unmistakably arresting to a man who's gone to bed more times with sorceresses--and witchers, if he's thinking of men--than ordinary folk. Emhyr is strong, graceful, not a dazzling swordsman but thoroughly competent, precisely aware of his own strengths and devastatingly quick to find his opponent's weaknesses.

Geralt watches him best two of his guards, defeating speed and strength with tactics and his pure will, and then he doesn't let himself cast another glance in that direction until Emhyr is gone. Geralt might watch, might think of it, but it wouldn't be good at all to be caught at it.

That night--when a soft knock at his chamber door just barely precedes Emhyr walking through, feet silent in embroidered slippers, the shape of his body alternately hidden and revealed by his rich dressing gown--Geralt realizes that he's an idiot. He stood there today, watching Emhyr size men up and take them down, finding their weak points and rendering his own absolute power unassailable against all their mere raw strength. And yet, somehow, Geralt still hadn't expected this.

Emhyr's presence here--at night and seemingly unattended, in a state of dishabille Geralt's never seen before--makes it perfectly obvious what he's come here for. If Geralt somehow missed those signs, there's no mistaking the look in his eyes. The desire in them is unguarded, and Geralt realizes he's had glimpses of it before. He hadn't wanted to see it, and Emhyr had never forced him to, until now.

Well. At least this solves the problem of getting laid.

Geralt turns half away as Emhyr shuts and locks the door and takes another step inside. He clears his throat, but Geralt doesn't want to hear what words he's going to put around this. He doesn't want to know whether Emhyr will lead with threats or start with an offer, if he'll try to make it sound pleasant or just state what he requires like it's any other contract he's summoned Geralt to undertake.

Geralt doesn't look at him. He's down to a pair of loose trousers himself, shirtless and barefoot; he's far more naked than Emhyr is. He was sitting in an improbably soft chair by the room's hearth when the knock on the door brought him to his feet. He won't sit again, but he eyes the last of the liquor in the glass on the side table consideringly.

He can't make himself turn his back any more than he can sit, but he only watches Emhyr in his peripheral vision as he declares his surrender. It's hardly any effort to sound just weary and bored. "My cocksucking skills are probably a little rusty, but a witcher's always virgin-tight. Up to you if that's a drawback or not."

Emhyr says nothing, and Geralt feels a little vicious satisfaction at wrong-footing him, even if it's pointless. He's not going to follow up with anything like an attack, after all. Emhyr's got him disarmed and surrounded, holds Ciri as a hostage and knows just how helpless Geralt is before any threat to her.

And now he's come to get what he wants, like plenty of asshole noblemen before him who thought fucking a witcher was just like bagging some particularly impressive trophy on a hunt. If it's the chase he wants, or the struggle, Geralt can't be arsed to give it to him. It's not even like he'd mind going to bed with Emhyr, if it were somehow possible to go to bed with a version of Emhyr who didn't bring the full might of the Nilfgaardian Empire along with him, crushing one more Nordling as he has the rest of the North. Geralt can take a lot, but that's going to leave bruises even on him.

"Bed?" Geralt inquires, when Emhyr still doesn't speak or come farther into the room. "Up against the wall? On my knees? You can have what you want, we both know that, but I'm not going to guess how to please you like your newest concubine on her first night."

"Geralt." There's something odd, something he's never heard, in Emhyr's voice. Geralt has to look, even if he would rather do almost anything else.

The desire is so thoroughly gone from Emhyr's expression that Geralt could almost believe it had never been there--except that there's still no other reason Emhyr would have come here like this, in the quiet of the night. Geralt doesn't know what it is in Emhyr's eyes now--something very cold and dry, searching. Perhaps probing for one last weakness, when Geralt's trying his fucking best to give in without a fight, so he can get out of this as unscathed as possible.

Geralt knows there's only one thing left for him to surrender, one tiny shred of a defense that he never actually would have used to shield himself. The words are bitter poison on his tongue, waking a little actual anger from his mostly-numb resignation, for all that he gets them out quiet and flat.

"I won't let on to Ciri, not in words or any other way. I won't blight her happiness here."

Ciri wants him to come back here, to keep coming back. To think of this as his home, for all it's a thousand miles from anywhere he can be of any use. And he will, for Ciri, but that means he can't even strike this place off his route in future, refuse to deal with Nilfgaard and so avoid putting himself back in this position again.

He'll have to leave to keep his word, though. He won't be able to hide this from Ciri as soon as tomorrow. He'll go to Corvo Bianco for a while, so she can check in on him if she's worried. That way she won't suspect too much. She must be waiting for him to get restless and leave anyway, but he feels no urge to rush right back to the Path when this is over.

Geralt will stay in one place for a while. He'll let Eskel come and find him if he cares to; Eskel's surely tracked his whereabouts through the last few months as carefully as Geralt has tracked his. Geralt thinks of that, building the image in his mind: a big, clean bed he's never shared with anyone, and in two or three weeks, dust rising on the road, heralding a familiar rider.

He doesn't really notice that he's closed his eyes, already half escaped into that consoling future, until Emhyr says, with a slightly different inflection, "Geralt?"

Geralt is forced sharply back to the present, and looks over to confirm what he can already tell from the sound: Emhyr is still standing just inside the door, now with his arms folded across his chest and a frown wrinkling his brows. Geralt gives in to the urge to roll his eyes; if he provokes Emhyr more than usual, maybe it will move things along that much faster.

"You're not the first," Geralt says with a stiff little shrug. "I get it, I know how this goes. I'm a witcher but you can still bring me to my knees. I'm sorry if I'm not conforming to whatever your fucking plan was for this little conquest, but if you'd just get on with it--" He doesn't know how to end that. Emhyr won't particularly care what Geralt wants, at this point, and Geralt's not going to offer him anything beyond whatever he demands.

Geralt's eyes skip away from Emhyr's face to trace the line of Emhyr's shoulders, which he'd so enjoyed watching earlier in the day. They're good shoulders. Too bad they belong to Emhyr var Emreis, Emperor of Nilfgaard, who--

Who turns, without another word, and unlocks the door and walks out. He does hesitate, just on the threshold, but doesn't look back. He only says, very low, so that Geralt wouldn't hear him from across the room without a witcher's senses, "Lock the door again behind me. Bar it. No one will trouble you."

Geralt stares, baffled, as Emhyr draws the door shut behind him. He walks up to the door and listens to the whisper of softly shod feet walking away. Far down the corridor--but only down one corridor, because Ciri gave Geralt rooms in the family's wing, and there's not much family to fill it--he hears Emhyr's door open and close. And then nothing; no guards mustering, no shouts, no courtesan summoned to satisfy Emhyr in his place. Nothing at all.

Geralt's almost tempted to go after Emhyr and ask him what the hell just happened, except he has a very strong feeling that he doesn't want to know.

He thinks of getting out of the palace, out of the city, but he already knows he can't leave like this, in the middle of the night. He won't upset Ciri--all the more so when there's no real reason for him to feel he has to leave. Nothing actually happened, after all. He feels nearly as unsettled as if it had, as if he somehow managed to get fucked by Emhyr without Emhyr lifting a finger to actually do it.

Geralt locks the door and bars it, and does the same with the balcony doors. He doesn't even attempt to look at the bed, with his head full of all the times he got fucked by powerful men and women who definitely didn't shy away from touching him to do it. He walks back into the sitting room, snags a few bottles from the neat little arrangement on a sideboard without checking what they are, and sits down on the least ornate chair in the room.

It's still astonishingly soft and comfortable; he can lean it back on two legs and feel as if he's suspended in air, touched by nothing at all. He opens a bottle and starts to drink.


	2. Chapter 2

Emhyr's experiences of courtship are limited, but even compared to the day he attempted to win Pavetta from her other suitors while still afflicted with a curse that robbed him of his human wits and human shape, he cannot help feeling that whatever just happened was a singular disaster.

He would like to be uncertain about exactly _what_ just happened, but he cannot cling to that pleasant illusion for more than a few stunned moments. Geralt was perfectly clear.

Geralt has been raped before now, by the relatively subtle coercion of the powerful, and he took Emhyr's carefully-calculated overture to mean that he was about to be raped again. With _Cirilla_ as hostage to ensure his meek surrender, of all the vile ways Emhyr can imagine anyone, let alone himself, forcing Geralt to do anything.

Emhyr had intended the opposite effect when he stole one of his rare unscheduled hours to try to speak to Geralt privately. He had thought it essential to speak to Geralt without an audience--in either sense--and to present himself as informally as he possibly could, precisely because it was meant only as a first invitation to parley. 

This first move was to be a soft approach, nonthreatening and even deniable, though he had judged the effort to be redundant since Geralt has never seemed in the least cowed by Emhyr's authority. Still, Emhyr had been willing to make efforts, even unnecessary efforts, in his pursuit of Geralt. And he had thought such a pursuit would not be wholly unwelcome, or unexpected, after the way Geralt watched him this afternoon.

Emhyr hasn't spoken much to Geralt since Cirilla retrieved him from the road, and only partly because of how rarely they see each other in circumstances which would permit it. 

Since returning to Nilfgaard, in the wake of what Cirilla has described as a decisive and final parting from the sorceress Yennefer, Geralt has remained withdrawn. He has been solitary except for the time he spends with Cirilla, and uncharacteristically quiet on those occasions when Cirilla has arranged for him and Emhyr to share her company together. Emhyr's thoughts on ways to draw him out, for his own sake and for Cirilla's, turned to gambits he had only idly considered before. He had never thought them remotely feasible.

Now, however, Geralt was in Nilfgaard indefinitely, without any impediment to a new relationship, perhaps with his guard a little lowered by his temporary aimlessness. Perhaps as willing to find a reason to stay happily in Nilfgaard as Emhyr would be to give him one. But Emhyr's calculations from that point relied on Geralt being essentially the same man he had known for well over twenty years: fazed by nothing, intimidated by no one, seeking no man's favor beyond being paid fairly for his work. 

Emhyr supposes that has not actually changed. Geralt wasn't intimidated in any obvious, direct way; he wasn't surprised, reaching his conclusion in the blink of an eye. He certainly made no attempt to win any favor. Emhyr is fairly certain that Geralt _was_ distressed by the prospect of what was about to happen; he had seemed to be going away inside himself. Emhyr knows the look of a man readying himself to feel as little of his coming torture as he can contrive.

He also knows, though he could wish that he did not, precisely how little violence is required to make sex-- _rape_ \--function as torture. 

So: he knows now that he launched his opening move at a weakness in Geralt's defenses which Emhyr had not anticipated. The undermining was done years ago by others--whose names he must, somehow, discover, because if any of them still live he must be sure they receive no favorable treatment from the Empire now or in future, and are entrusted with no lands or offices. The cruelty of the act might not distinguish them from their peers, but the sheer short-sighted idiocy of so abusing a man of Geralt's incomparable worth cannot be overlooked.

In all likelihood, however, time and the natural effects of such incompetence, if not Geralt himself, have put those others well beyond Emhyr's reach. The only person available for chastisement who has harmed Geralt in that fashion is Emhyr himself. Emhyr cannot afford any delusion that he hasn't caused harm, simply because he didn't complete the rape he inadvertently led Geralt to expect from him. He did as little harm as he could, in the circumstances, but that doesn't mean there was none.

The damage must be redressed; suitable reparation must be made. He must do whatever is required to make plain to Geralt that Emhyr offers no threat, either to his person or his place here with Cirilla. If that can be accomplished... it will still remain to be seen whether or not Geralt can bring himself to have any degree of ease with Emhyr, or anything warmer than bare civility. 

That chance might be lost entirely--but Emhyr cannot shirk simply because the prize might be only to repair his own damage, and not what he'd first hoped for.

Emhyr paces, turning possibilities over in his mind, evolving possible strategies, testing them, rejecting most of them. He gets lost repeatedly in improbable fantasies of making rich old men kneel before Geralt and beg his forgiveness before being executed; and the improbable becomes outright unimaginable when he tries to picture Geralt being in any way pleased by Emhyr interfering so in his own private concerns. 

Emhyr reaches the wee hours of the night and knows that he'll suffer for it if he doesn't catch at least a few hours of sleep. He could fight through if he had to, but he knows he's not coming up with anything useful now, and he certainly can't do anything to solve the problem before the morning. He had promised Geralt that he would not be troubled; that must at least last the night.

It is an effort to clear his mind, and sleep is a long time coming. He is acutely aware of being alone, untouched, in retreat, when he had expected to be falling asleep at least hopeful, if not already sated.

He did not know, until he felt it gutter, how good it felt to have that flame of hope burning for something so personal--so small, in the scheme of things, but looming large in its immediacy.

Still, the demands of the body provide their own distraction. He is exhausted enough that sleep inevitably comes, and he does not dream.

Dawn wakes him to his morning routines. Servants are moving around his rooms, setting out clothes, his bath and shaving accoutrement, breakfast, accompanied by the first reports and letters and papers of the day. 

He rises, and finally puts the problem of Geralt from his mind for a few hours.

At midmorning--by which time he has relocated to his office, tackling a much larger pile of papers--Ciri joins him, and Emhyr recalls Geralt's quiet, hopeless words, the remembered words striking him with as much breathtaking force as they had the first time. _I won't let on to Ciri, not in words or any other way. I won't blight her happiness here._

Ciri's smile is already turning thoughtful as she comes to take her accustomed chair by his desk and observe his work. Emhyr himself has already begun to betray the situation, or some shadow of it, to Cirilla, and he realizes that this is not a failure to be remedied but the only way forward. 

As he had meant to offer Geralt something honorable, in good faith, something Geralt would have had no reason to conceal from Cirilla, so Emhyr must speak of his failed attempt to her. There is no way to demonstrate that he did not intend anything sinister or shameful but to be open and unashamed. 

Still, he greets Cirilla as normal and begins taking her through the items she will find particularly instructive. In the back of his mind he turns over the question of exactly _what_ to tell her; he hasn't quite reached a conclusion before Cirilla tugs pen and parchment both from his hands and says, "Father."

She doesn't always call him that; she always means something by it when she does. He still can't help smiling a little at the word. 

"Cirilla. I'm sorry, I'm not attending properly."

She searches his face for a moment and then says, "You didn't sleep well."

Emhyr tilts his head in a near-nod, encouraging her to go on. She can't possibly guess all of it, but it will be good to find out what she sees--what she already knows, and what she can extrapolate from it.

"It's funny, because Geralt didn't either," she goes on, still studying Emhyr intently. "Except he's meditating off a hangover, while you..." She frowns a little. "I don't know what you look like hung over, but I'd swear you weren't drinking last night. And if Geralt's getting that drunk, he's not usually alone in a locked room."

Emhyr does not suppress his wince at this indication of what he drove Geralt to, last night.

Cirilla's expression turns triumphant, and she points at Emhyr's face, at the expression he has allowed her to see. "So? What happened?"

Emhyr takes a breath and sits back, pressing his hands against each other to keep from making any more betraying gesture. He must be honest with Cirilla, but at the same time he must not reveal anything to her that Geralt would wish concealed. He cannot speak of the past, only his own actions. "I need to apologize to Geralt, somehow, because I evidently made myself extremely offensive to him last night."

Ciri sits back, her expression wiped blank with shock. "That's..." Her brow wrinkles. "That's not... _Offensive_? To _Geralt_?"

Emhyr takes a fortifying breath and shrugs. "I made an advance. It was... more unwelcome than I realized it could possibly be, judging by Geralt's reaction."

And if she presumes that it is the drinking he refers to, and not Geralt's _immediate_ response, so much the better.

Ciri actually looks him up and down, as though evaluating--he does not want to know what--and then returns to frowning into the middle distance. "But Geralt... he would've just laughed, or told you to go jump in the river, or something." 

"He made himself very clear," Emhyr says firmly. "He had no trouble doing that. But, as I said, it was clearly much more vexing than I had thought it could be, and so I find I need to apologize. How do you think that could best be done? What would assure him that I had no wish to give offense, and will not repeat that offense in future?"

Cirilla's frown shifts into a different kind of thoughtfulness. "I mean... tell him that, I guess. He's not going to hold out for..." 

Cirilla trails off again, frown deepening, and when she looks up she says slowly, "I don't think I can remember anyone ever apologizing to Geralt. I don't know if anyone ever has, about anything that mattered. I mean, I said sorry sometimes, when I'd misbehaved, and Eskel might say it casually, about some tiny thing, or else jokingly, but..."

Emhyr feels his own frown deepening. "You said his relationship with Yennefer had been... tumultuous. Of course you wouldn't have been privy to much of it, but surely..." Surely she had sometimes admitted that she was in the wrong and expressed contrition in order to win Geralt back?

Cirilla is slowly shaking her head, not uncertainly but solemnly. "Yen wouldn't, no. Geralt hardly ever did either, but if one of them was going to crawl back to the other, it was him. If he and Eskel were actually fighting instead of just bickering they usually just _fought_ , or if Lambert or Coen..." 

She shakes her head again, clearly racking her brain now for any possible example. "And Uncle Vesemir _definitely_ wouldn't... but sometimes if they annoyed Vesemir really badly, they would try to apologize to _him_."

Emhyr never felt entitled to ask about those years of Ciri's childhood; she had been reasonably safe and happy during the time she spent under Geralt's tutelage at Kaer Morhen. But he cannot resist hanging on any detail she lets slip, either, for exactly the reason that it was a time when she was happy--with Geralt. 

"Oh?" He says, not quite asking even now.

"Yeah, but," Ciri makes a wry face, shrugging. "You can't exactly do some big cleaning or mending job for him, or go off on a contract until he's not so angry and come back with money and food, or go out on the mountain gathering herbs so he doesn't have to."

All not merely useful tasks, but tasks involving a significant and humbling commitment of time and effort. Achieving the same ends through money or delegation would be an insulting parody of an apology--and would only emphasize the power Emhyr commands, which is the root of the entire problem. 

It does suggest a suitable gesture he could make, but that isn't something he can achieve within the day. And it is not merely his own impatience suggesting that he must set things right with Geralt as soon as possible--this is like setting a broken bone straight before it can begin to knit at some unnatural angle. The problem will only be compounded until it is addressed, with every hour that Geralt spends braced for some further assault.

Well, if there is no obvious gesture Emhyr can make, he can still do as Ciri had suggested first, and make himself clear to Geralt in words. His sincerity may only be provable with time. Unfortunately, speaking of this to Geralt will require privacy, and privacy with Emhyr will be intensely unwelcome to Geralt just now.

"Lunch, then," Emhyr says. He and Cirilla normally work together through the remainder of the morning, then share the noon meal and some lighter conversation before she goes off to train and he attends to sundry matters around the palace. "Would you ask him to join us, and tell the steward to increase the portions accordingly?"

With Cirilla present, Geralt should feel no threat of immediate attack, and that ought to keep him settled long enough for Emhyr to state the essentials. After that... well, that will be up to Geralt.

* * *

Geralt surfaces briefly from meditation when a portal opens in his room, but he recognizes the feel of Ciri's magic before the portal is even entirely open. She stands before him for a moment, hands on hips, and then says, "Hung over?"

Geralt gestures at himself, on his knees, and says, "Working on not being."

Ciri gives a short, brisk nod and says, "Well, for future reference, the servants get worried when all the doors into your rooms are barred and you won't let them in to bring your bath and breakfast, or even respond to them through the door. And then they worry _me_ over it."

"Ah," Geralt says, blinking at her. "Okay. I'll unbar the door."

Ciri flaps a hand dismissively at this. "I'll get it. Get back to meditating."

He does, though he doesn't keep at it for as long as he probably should. Ciri will have let the servants in, and therefore water and breakfast will be awaiting him as soon as he rouses. Both will start out hot, but they won't stay that way forever.

As it turns out, he needn't have worried about anything getting cold; the hot water has been delivered in tall canisters, lids sealed, which are swathed in towels to keep them warm. As an added benefit, this means that his usual complement of ridiculously fluffy towels is increased to a truly absurd number, half of them already warmed for him. 

Breakfast has similarly been set up to await his convenience--half of it is in some sort of lidded metal container on legs, underneath which a small flame is burning. It's not a candle, but some sort of oil or resin, with a blue-hot flame. When he removes the lid, he finds sausage and eggs and a bowl of sweetened porridge all keeping warm for him--which is to say nothing of the fresh-baked loaves wrapped in their own sort of towel to keep warm, and then the rest of the spread, cold meat and hard boiled eggs and fruit and butter and jam and five kinds of sweets, plus a jug of small beer and another of clear water.

Geralt smiles at the abundance, then starts arranging things so he can eat while lounging in his bath, and as he has every morning so far in Nilfgaard, he thinks, _I have to tell Eskel about this._

The thought comes with a shadow today. He doesn't want to tell Eskel about last night. He doesn't want to tell anyone about last night. He would like to forget last night ever happened, for a number of reasons.

By the time he's settled in his bath, munching on sausages and good bread that's still soft and steaming inside, he feels fortified enough to admit at least to himself that he mishandled the night before completely. He shouldn't have barred the doors and worried Ciri and the servants; he shouldn't have been too dead to the world to hear them knock at the doors; he shouldn't have gotten so drunk as to render himself sleep-sodden. 

He shouldn't, back at the start of it all, have made such a big deal of it when Emhyr turned up wanting what he wanted. There was no need to give in with such bad grace that Emhyr decided he wasn't worth the bother. In the light of day, rested and beginning to be well fed, mind cleared by the meditation he's been neglecting, Geralt can see that. 

It needn't have been really unpleasant, even if it would have had an unavoidably bitter edge. Hell, some of the lords who asked it of him when he was too new to the Path to guard himself against that sort of threat had shown him a good enough time. Emhyr's pride certainly wouldn't have permitted him to leave Geralt unsatisfied, and Geralt doesn't think his tastes run to outright viciousness.

After all, Geralt _had_ been looking at Emhyr that day, which Emhyr surely had seen; he'd really only come asking for what he already knew Geralt wanted, even if Geralt never would have asked for it. If Geralt had just gritted his teeth, held his temper, and not been as much of an asshole as possible about the whole thing, he'd have gotten laid last night and this morning Emhyr would probably...

His thoughts falter at trying to guess what Emhyr might have thought, in that other contingency. It requires him to first guess what Emhyr is thinking in the reality where Geralt was surly and crude and left Emhyr too disgusted with him--with the thought of how many others had been here before him, maybe--to even look at Geralt, by the time Geralt managed to shut up.

The food doesn't taste so good anymore, even before he starts trying to guess what happens next. Maybe he should go to Corvo Bianco for a while anyway. Maybe Eskel...

But if Eskel shows up he'll ask about Yen, and about Nilfgaard, and he'll know when Geralt lies to him, even if he doesn't work out exactly what Geralt wants to hide. Though, knowing Eskel, Geralt won't be able to hide anything for all that long. Maybe it _would_ be better to stay here?

Geralt sinks down under the pleasantly hot water and doesn't breathe for a while.

* * *

He does emerge from the bath and from his rooms eventually. He goes down to the training yard even though it's full of uniformed men doing some sort of elaborate pike and spear drill, and finds himself a lonely corner and a few dummies to swing his swords at. It feels good to stretch himself, his warming muscles easing something else within him. 

He's smiling a little by the time the sun is climbing toward noon, and he completes a series of passes with his silver sword only to realize Ciri is standing against the wall, watching him. The drill company is gone, and there are only a few youths practicing now, doing a terrible job of pretending not to be watching the Princess and the Nordling.

Ciri shouldn't be here; she spends her mornings with Emhyr, right through lunch. Geralt normally doesn't see her before afternoon at the earliest, because she normally isn't called upon to make sure he hasn't drunk himself into a coma first thing in the morning. Also because she doesn't abandon her empress-in-training lessons to stand there and watch Geralt swing a sword.

Geralt sheathes the blade; Ciri takes that for the invitation it is and walks over to him. "Working up an appetite?"

Geralt shrugs. He didn't wind up eating as much as usual of his decadent breakfast spread, but it isn't as though an hour's practice will leave him starving. Or, for that matter, like he hasn't worked out how to feed himself without Ciri's direct intervention for the last few weeks. He can find his own lunch just fine; in point of fact it will probably find him.

"I just had a really weird conversation with Emhyr," Ciri says, looking at him with her head tilted to one side, as good as waving a flag on her scrutiny of him. 

Geralt has absolutely no idea what to say, only that he feels abruptly cold and half-sick at the thought of Ciri knowing--what? What version of last night has Emhyr already told her, and for fuck's sake, _why?_

"He wanted my advice," Ciri answers the unaskable question. "About how to... talk to you. He thought he'd _been offensive_ , was how he said it."

Geralt frowns a little. This is... not the way that's supposed to go. 

Not unless he was ten times as much of an idiot last night as he'd already thought. If Emhyr had just wandered down to Geralt's room in his dressing gown to ask some innocuous question, or tell him about something Ciri had said or done that day, and then Geralt blurted out all that vileness for _no reason_...

"It's fine," Geralt says, hands itching to draw steel, though he won't with Ciri standing in front of him, unarmed and unarmored, even if she's never defenseless. "Forgotten already. It was nothing."

Ciri takes a sharp step in, nearly enough to make Geralt jerk back from her. She studies him even more closely, then says, "Yeah. See? That's what I told him. I said you weren't going to hold out for some grand apology, because I couldn't remember a time anyone ever bothered to apologize to you. You don't expect it of anyone, do you?"

Too rattled for tact, Geralt blurts out, "Well, I don't expect it of _the Emperor of Nilfgaard_."

Ciri's eyebrows twitch up. "Huh." She says. "Well. You should definitely come and have lunch with me and Emhyr, then. We'll have plenty. An hour from now." She glances at the sky and adds, "In the rose garden, past the wall. They'll put up an awning for us, since there's no shade."

Lunch under an awning in a rose garden with the Emperor. _I've got to tell--_

Geralt halts the thought there and gives Ciri a sharp nod before he turns his back to her, drawing his sword to attack the dummies again.


	3. Chapter 3

There's wash water and fresh clothing laid out when he returns to his rooms to lay down his swords before going to lunch. Geralt considers ignoring the hint, but his sweat is already turning cold on his skin, and Ciri said they would be sitting in shade. No need to leave himself clammy as well as disheveled all through this lunch, whatever it's going to turn out to be.

He has a general idea of where the rose garden is, and he knows what roses smell like; they're in bloom now, with the sun shining warmly on them, so it's no trouble to find his way. When he reaches the edge of the rose garden, he realizes the practicality of it as a place for Emhyr and Ciri to share a private meal. 

The garden stretches over at least half an acre, surrounded by walls that extend above Geralt's head, with only two gates to enter through. The rose bushes are no more than waist high, planted too sparsely to give full cover even to someone crouching low, and the awning for their lunch is set up in the dead center of the garden. There's no way anyone can get within a hundred feet without one of them noticing.

The fact that it's also pretty is presumably just an incidental detail--or maybe Emhyr chose it particularly for lunch today, with Geralt, to cover the expected smell of ill-mannered Nordling. Geralt straightens his fresh doublet and feels faintly vindicated.

There are only servants under the awning when he enters the garden, so Geralt wanders along a winding path through the roses, admiring the wide variety of colors. He's seen red and yellow and white roses before, but there are pink ones and orange ones and roses whose petals change from one color at the base to another at the tips. They're all equally useless for any practical purpose--he can see where flowers have been cut away before they could wilt, which means they won't set fruit. But the garden shows that people have spent all kinds of time--years, maybe generations--and work and probably magic, just to make all these different kinds of flowers bloom here. 

He hears Ciri's footfalls on gravel when she comes through the gate, Emhyr following just behind. Geralt doesn't look up until they're both nearly at the awning, and then he moves onto the most direct path to join them. No point in putting this off.

The table is a simple square, with one chair on each of three sides. Ciri plants herself in the middle one, which leaves Geralt and Emhyr facing each other with Ciri between them. The tables have never been this small when Geralt joined them for a meal before; he would barely have to lean to reach all the way across it. Geralt gives Emhyr a quick glance, a neutral nod. Emhyr looks tense, drawn, and he's watching Geralt nearly as intently as Ciri had in the training yard.

Geralt focuses on the food. There's lots of it, and the point of a meal is to eat, so he'll eat. He'll let Ciri see him eating and breathing like normal, and get this over with. Food has been set out on platters for them to help themselves, so clearly no servants will be interrupting until they're wanted. 

For a moment it's just a meal, not unlike the others they've shared; they're all filling their plates and cups and passing this and that. Ciri starts telling Geralt about some land survey business she helped Emhyr with that morning, Emhyr occasionally putting in a detail or small correction. Geralt nods along, letting Ciri's voice wash over him without taking in anything other than the food he's shoveling down. He doesn't look at Emhyr. 

He's made a pretty good dent in his meal before Ciri's voice takes on the tones that indicate she's reaching the conclusion of the thrilling tale of adjudicating property borders when a river changes its course due to a spring flood. Geralt forces himself to actually listen again. 

"Anyway," Ciri says, shooting a thoughtful glance at Geralt and, oddly, his plate, then moving like she's nudging Emhyr under the table with her toe. "You had something you wanted to say?"

Geralt drops his gaze to his plate and makes himself breathe very shallowly. He must accept whatever Emhyr says to him without showing any sign of... anything.

"Yes," Emhyr says briskly. "Geralt, I wish to apologize."

Geralt's gaze jerks up without his volition. Ciri said that, but she said she told him _not_ to, Geralt told her it wasn't necessary, and still Emhyr--Emhyr sounds like he means it. His voice is steady, without any edge of exasperation to indicate that he's only apologizing because Geralt made a stupid fuss over nothing, and Emhyr wants to smooth it over. Not that Geralt can imagine Emhyr stooping to apologize in such a case. 

Emhyr just looks serious. As if this mattered.

"I'm sorry," Emhyr says deliberately, his gaze steady while Geralt searches for any sign of duplicity and, even with a witcher's senses and a hell of a lot of practice, finds none. He can sense a very restrained unhappiness, but no trace of a lie. "I should not have intruded upon you last night, or at any time. I had not intended to press something odious upon you, and I beg your pardon for my mistake. I will, of course, not repeat it, nor speak of it again."

Geralt stares, truly bewildered now. That sounds as if... as if Emhyr came to Geralt's room for the reason Geralt thought, yes, but not at all in the way Geralt thought when he saw Emhyr standing there. As if Emhyr only meant to _ask_ , and to take no for an answer, with no particularly hard feelings, if Geralt was fool enough to say it.

Geralt looks to Ciri, who is watching him--who is _present_ for this by Emhyr's choice, who Emhyr allowed to prompt him to it. "What the hell," Geralt says helplessly.

"Yeah," Ciri says, smiling as she props her chin on her hand, though her eyes are still sharp. "I think he means it, too. I bet if you ask him for something he'll give it to you. He feels bad, he missed sleep."

Geralt makes himself look back to Emhyr, who is watching him attentively. Waiting for something. Waiting for Geralt to ask for something? Waiting for him to _say something_ to that?

"What," Geralt says, and then has to take a gulp of his wine--watered for a warm midday meal--before he can get more words out, though it's still a struggle. "What did you intend, if not..."

"Ah," Emhyr says, and now it's his turn to look down. Ciri's head swivels to study him as closely as she's been watching Geralt. "Well, only to offer something I thought you might--we both might--enjoy."

Geralt cannot sit here in this rose garden with these tiny gold forks next to this gold-rimmed china plate and listen to Emhyr talk around this, not when he's so close to getting a grip on what the fuck happened last night. And, honestly, it's not like Ciri hasn't heard worse from him. "You mean, sex?"

Emhyr looks up, a smile beginning to curl the corner of his mouth, his eyes heavy-lidded and almost warm for the first time since Geralt wiped that avid interest off his face last night. "If that were agreeable, certainly. But not only that, if you were amenable to more. I had thought to pursue something that would last beyond the night--something that could," Emhyr makes a small gesture encompassing Ciri, the rose garden, maybe the palace. Maybe _Nilfgaard_. "Be brought into daylight, if it prospered."

Geralt cannot make a sound. There are no words in his head to be pushed out of his mouth. 

Ciri lets out something like a happy squeak, and she's the one who says, "Emhyr! You wanted to _ask him out?_ Like--"

"In, mostly, given the logistics," Emhyr says blandly, seeming to become more unruffled the more Ciri and Geralt are shocked, though he's still not entirely at his ease. "But, yes. Not merely an encounter, or a series of them, but the initiation of a... relationship."

"A _romantic_ relationship," Ciri puts in, helpfully, because Geralt still cannot speak or even remember how speaking works.

Emhyr tilts his head, but his expression goes serious again as he meets Geralt's gaze. "That would have been my goal, if my overture had not been unwelcome." 

It seems impossible. Absurd. That Emhyr would want--that Emhyr would _ask_ \--and is telling him now, like even after Geralt fucked it all up and as good as accused him of something he never meant, Emhyr might _still_ be asking, offering-- 

But what absurd and impossible thing isn't commonplace here? This is the Imperial Palace of Nilfgaard, where roses come in a hundred colors and it's someone's job to wrap fluffy towels around water cans so the resident witcher can have a hot bath whenever he likes. Why shouldn't the emperor want to--to--with--

"Ciri," Geralt says, his voice coming out a little hoarse but gratifyingly coherent, his gaze locked on Emhyr. "You're excused from the table. Shut the gates behind you on your way out. And lock them."

He doesn't have the authority to send Princess Cirilla anywhere, and certainly not out of Emperor Emhyr's presence, but Emhyr doesn't look away from Geralt and Ciri bounces to her feet with more enthusiasm than she ever had when Geralt was sending her from the table back at Kaer Morhen. 

"Yes, Dad," she says, and in the midst of everything his heart flutters in his chest at the rare teasing-but-not-joking name even before Ciri bends to press a kiss to his cheek. 

"Be good, Father," she adds, and presses an identical kiss to Emhyr's cheek before she turns away, nearly skipping down the path. She calls over her shoulder, "Or at least be careful!"

Geralt doesn't look away from Emhyr until he hears the gate slam and the firm metallic click of a gate that may or may not have a lock nonetheless being locked because Ciri wants it that way. 

It strikes him forcefully then that he is entirely alone with Emhyr. It's not that he disbelieves what Emhyr has said--Ciri is at least as good as Geralt is at spotting lies, and he doesn't think Emhyr could deceive both of them at once even if he had some actually important reason to try--but it feels strangely momentous. Geralt has to let his gaze roam over the field of brightly colored blooms. 

In his peripheral vision, he sees Emhyr lean back, plucking some morsel from his plate to pop into his mouth. Every line of his body shows that he's content to sit there in silence as long as he has to--but as long as he has to _for what?_

"I don't understand," Geralt says finally, to the farthest wall. Even mere stone is almost dazzling in the noon light, and Emhyr is still slouching at the edge of his vision, a dark shape here in the shade. "Men don't..." 

Geralt knows that's not exactly true. He's known men who did; he just also knows men aren't _supposed to_ , not... not really. Not men like him, not the kind of thing Emhyr's talking about. Fucking, sure. They could fuck and get away with it; being the emperor's got to be good for something and there's hardly anyone left to be disappointed in Geralt.

But Emhyr had said, not just sex. Emhyr had told Ciri. Emhyr had said, _daylight_.

"What exactly do you want? And in all hells, _why?_ Why with _me_ , when you could have anyone?" Geralt finally asks, looking directly at Emhyr. "Remember I'm from the North and use small words."

Emhyr snorts amused dismissal of that last, but when he speaks his words are slow and thoughtful, and unequivocal. "With you: because I desire you, and like you, and trust you, and because I cannot help but feel something for a man so devoted to my daughter, who has earned so much devotion from her in return."

Geralt drops his gaze to Emhyr's hands, the plain words feeling like a sudden blizzard of rose petals--wildly improbable, sweet and disorienting, nearly smothering for all their softness. Possibly fatal.

"What I want..." Emhyr goes on thoughtfully. "Sex, yes, as you said, and related intimacies. Conversation, as I feel sure we could find much to discuss. Friendship, and affection, if it should come about. Your time and attention, as you can spare them, and as I can spare time to enjoy them. A measure of trust from you, if I can earn it."

None of that sounds particularly definite, coming from the man who has worked plans within plans for all the years Geralt has known him. Geralt looks up again to meet Emhyr's eyes, and sees... maybe not the Emperor of Nilfgaard, Annexer of the North. Maybe a man named Emhyr, once called Duny, once afflicted with a curse he held out against for years and nearly conquered, in the end, needing only some help at the last from a witcher--but still, always, set apart. Still reaching out from that lonely place, even if it's a palace now instead of a cave.

"And," Emhyr says, his voice almost apologetic though his smile is returning, "if I manage to make it worth your while, perhaps you would indulge me to the extent of being seen to be my--favorite, they usually call it--despite all the attention from the Court that would inevitably follow. I know that would be a very great deal to ask; there might be parties."

Geralt lets out a little laugh, more a breaking of tension than real amusement at the thought. Nilfgaardian parties sound ghastly. But it's easier, after that, to just ask, "But I'm--don't people mind that, in Nilfgaard? Men? I thought everything was a bit more... rigid, here, not like Toussaint or up north."

Emhyr gives him a sardonic smile. "Oh, rigid, of course, but if the rules were as simple as that, any Nordling could follow them without danger of embarrassing himself, and then where would we be?"

"How," Geralt says, and cuts himself off as he realizes that in Nilfgaard the answer to _how complicated could it be_ , is _infinitely_. 

"Much depends on, oh, several factors, most of which do not concern us, since as Emperor I am allowed the greatest latitude, outside of certain specific ritual obligations I have as High Priest of the Great Sun. There will be a week in the winter when I can't touch you at all, but I'll have very little time to in any case, between the Rites and the business of the Empire."

Geralt nods, bemused as much by Emhyr so casually looking a half-year into their hypothetical shared future as by the idea of Emhyr as a priest of anything. "How much latitude do Nordlings get?"

"None, so in some sense you come around to being beyond reproach from the other side. If you were, oh, a beautiful boy, young enough to be plausibly virginal and from a royal line--such as royal lines are in the North--then a liaison might be regarded as passably correct, and you would be expected to constantly strive for the approval of the Court. I could give you some modest rank and lands to give you status within the Court, which would be legally secure but forever contested politically and socially."

Geralt grimaces. None of that sounds appealing, and he's already _got_ both land and a title, for all the good they've done him so far.

"But as you are--" Emhyr gestures to him as though there are no words to sum him up. "You are irredeemable, and must simply be accepted as the eccentric whim of an emperor who has spent too much time in the wilds himself. Publicly displaying that eccentricity will be seen as self-indulgent on my part; perhaps a softening of self-discipline."

Geralt studies Emhyr, and sees the sharp calculation in his gaze. _There_ is the ruthless strategist after all. "Signs of an emperor who really ought to abdicate within the year?"

Emhyr picks up his wine glass, tipping it toward Geralt before he takes a sip. "Yes. And, too..." 

His expression turns pensive. He swirls the wine gently, looking down into it. "I have not had a favorite since I took the throne. I have had various liaisons--more in the field than here, as there is far less scrutiny outside Nilfgaard--but only occasionally. No man more than once or twice. And always, only, men."

 _Since I took the throne_ also means _since my wife died_. Geralt didn't know her well, or for long, but he saw enough to know that the love--and the passion--between them was genuine. Emhyr is not one of those men who can _only_ desire other men, so if he has chosen not to have another woman since Pavetta, it is either some attempt at staying morbidly faithful to a dead woman, on a thin technicality that Geralt knows Emhyr would scorn, or... Or Emhyr has had some other purpose, all these years.

Emhyr is silent, letting Geralt work it out.

"You didn't remarry, either," Geralt says finally, when he's pretty sure he has it. Emhyr's tiny nod is confirmation that this is the right track. "Spoke of it now and then, but never even a real betrothal. You didn't want another child after Ciri, not even a bastard. Not even the chance of one."

Emhyr's nod is easier to see this time. "Not even the appearance of intending to invite the chance of one. Because that would also give the appearance of less than complete confidence in the heir I already have, a possible crack in the united front I present with her, to be exploited by all who care to try. Whereas if I finally end my long appearance of abstinence with a male lo-- _favorite_ \--"

Geralt knows what Emhyr didn't say, and does not contemplate why he didn't say it. 

"Then that is a very firm statement that I am not interested in any other possible heir of my body. And if the man I favor is none other than the one who fostered Cirilla and protected her from my political enemies during her childhood, I make that much more emphatic my commitment to the heir I already have."

Geralt nods. It fits; he doesn't think that Emhyr calculated backward from the political gains to some ploy of wanting him, but it's Emhyr's way to consider every angle before he makes a move. It's reassuring to know that he's worked all of this out already.

"And," Emhyr adds, raising three fingers to count off another point, "aside from Cirilla herself, you are singularly devoid of political connections and hangers-on who may seek to enrich themselves or influence me through you--or be suspected of doing so. You have no family, no clan; your land is new-granted and without strategic significance, your title even more trifling. You avow no religion. There are the last remnants of a... trade association, I suppose."

Geralt is startled into another short laugh to hear the School of the Wolf--or perhaps witchers as a whole--described that way. They do _try_ to be professionals, so it's not entirely inaccurate. Certainly it's true that they are down to their last remnants, but he doesn't let himself dwell on those most recent losses. 

"Eskel and Lambert won't ask for much. Maybe a hot meal and a fresh horse apiece." 

Which raises a whole other question he's going to have to ask Emhyr, even if it bursts the pretty soap bubble of these possibilities, but Geralt is in no rush to get to that. He can sit at this table listening to Emhyr plot this dreamlike future as if it were his next campaign, and believe it for a little longer.

"That I can certainly spare," Emhyr agrees judiciously. He continues in a less facetious tone, "For your sake, and for Cirilla's, they would of course be made welcome. She's mentioned them, when she talks about you training her. And from what I've learned they seem to have even less inclination to involve themselves in politics than you do."

Geralt nods, wondering idly how much Emhyr has troubled himself to learn about witchers, for one reason or another over the years. "They learned to steer clear. I never got the hang of that."

Emhyr tilts his head. "To my benefit, so I can hardly complain. And that brings us to your fourth strategic virtue, which is that if I have you in my bed or at my side, I am safer from any attempt at assassination than all my guards could make me."

"Four strategic virtues," Geralt echoes. "That's more than some mountain passes." 

Emhyr nods. "And you know I can't resist a mountain pass."

Geralt can't hold back a laugh at that--not a single huff or a short chuckle, but an uncontrolled burst of laughter, loud and long. Emhyr's laughing too, more softly, with what looks like the same rush of shocking delight Geralt feels. Watching him laugh, it suddenly seems unimaginable to Geralt that they're sitting on opposite sides of this table, as if they're facing each other down over a game of Gwent. 

He knows he has to be the one to move, so he gets up and shifts to Ciri's abandoned seat, letting his knee brush against Emhyr's as he settles into it.

The touch raises a fresh awareness of what they're negotiating for, what Geralt's strategic virtues might earn him, and his laughter dies as he recalls what else he has to know. After the way it ended with Yennefer, he has to have an answer to this first. He doesn't want it to come out late again, and have Emhyr feel angry, or betrayed, or worse.

Emhyr is quiet too, watching him again. Geralt plants his hand on his own knee, carefully apart from Emhyr's, and studies it as he says, "What you want from me... you said some things, but you didn't say..." He still can't make himself ask, has to just say it. "You'll want me to be faithful to you. Exclusively."

"Mm," Emhyr says, which is not the _yes of course_ Geralt expected of him. Geralt looks up to study his face, but Emhyr is looking away, expression tightly controlled. He doesn't like the question, or that Geralt asked it, or asked it so soon. Or--

"I know that you," Emhyr makes an open-handed gesture, "crave variety. When you choose to travel in the north, or reside in Toussaint--as long as I am not with you, what company you keep will be your own business. I won't tax you with questions about any time you spend away from me."

That's a lot more than Geralt expected Emhyr to allow, although it doesn't exactly answer the question. It's obvious Emhyr is thinking of whores and passing encounters, and despite his careful words he obviously doesn't like the idea.

His next words only drive that point home. "I would not wish to be more aware of such liaisons than is strictly necessary, so I would ask you to be discreet. Here in Nilfgaard, and especially in the palace... arrangements could be made, of course, for whatever you require. But it would create rather an awkward appearance, if the Emperor's Favorite were seen to be sharing his favor freely with others."

By which Geralt is pretty sure Emhyr means, _Please don't publicly humiliate me by whoring your way around the city where my courtiers can see you_ , and Geralt can't quite believe that that's all Emhyr is going to ask for. 

It also _still_ doesn't answer the question. Especially if Emhyr wants to keep at least a pretense of ignorance, because Geralt can't guarantee that forever. Trying would soon become unpleasant, anyway. Especially since Emhyr, unlike Yennefer, won't spend years assuming that Geralt's only interested in fucking women.

"An Emperor's Favorite," Emhyr goes on, his tone meditative and abstract, as if he's merely relating a bit of philosophy, nothing that has anything to do with them here and now, "is so called in part because an Emperor can never take an interest in only one person. More usually he would have a spouse, perhaps for some political alliance, perhaps for the necessity of heirs. And an Emperor's first duty is to the Empire, no matter what he feels for any person in it. But still, he can have a favorite, to whom he returns. To whom he shows special favor above all others. I think..."

Emhyr's face tenses, and Geralt almost can't breathe, waiting for what Emhyr's going to say, so very carefully and obliquely that it must be something he wants desperately. 

"For so long as you are willing to be my Favorite," Emhyr says, very quietly. "I should like to feel that I am yours."

Geralt presses his hand over his mouth, holding back any too-quick response. That's a lot, what Emhyr wants. Emhyr's been thinking about this, planning it, and he's gotten way down the road before he even suggested the journey to Geralt. That's Emhyr all over; Geralt even kind of likes knowing where this is headed, and that Emhyr has thought that all out, but...

Geralt has to tell him, and then... then it will be up to Emhyr. That's all. 

Still, Geralt can't bring himself to be much more direct than Emhyr has been, when it comes to the heart of things.

"Yennefer," he starts, and Emhyr jerks a little in his seat, frowning, lips parting to say something. Probably, _I thought she threw you out_. 

Geralt shakes his head, holding up one hand. "No, that's--we're done. It's over, really over. If I got my cock out in her presence she'd probably banish it to the bottom of the sea, at this point. But she... we..."

Geralt swallows and tries again. "She was the love of my life. For all we fought, all the times we were apart because we couldn't stand the sight of each other, everything that made it so, she was that. Is, maybe. Maybe you only get one, and she's mine, even though we've given up on being together. But it was love, and more than love. Destiny. We were all tangled up in each other, and we..." 

Geralt shakes his head before he can get too lost in the thicket of things he hasn't even put into words to himself.

"I would never have left her," Geralt says, getting to the point. "I might have walked away for a while, but I would have gone back to her every time, if she just _understood_ , if she'd been willing to have me." If she'd been willing to overlook a fraction as much as the curse had evidently forced her to... 

"Because it's not the same kind of thing, even if it looks something like it from the outside. It was nothing I was taking from her, nothing _he_ ever took away from her, but--"

Emhyr is very silent, maybe not even breathing, and Geralt finally just says it.

"But there's Eskel. And she said I couldn't have him that way, not ever again. She said it counted the same, but it's _not the same_."

Geralt glances at Emhyr, to see if he's as appalled and furious as Yen was--at least he probably won't be disgusted. But Emhyr is nothing but stillness, watching and listening, not passing judgment yet. That has to mean there's a chance that he _will_ understand, and be willing to allow it, if Geralt can just explain it right this time.

When Geralt still hesitates to go on, Emhyr says, "Eskel. Your fellow witcher."

Geralt nods quickly. "Yes, and that's--we've known each other since we were that high," Geralt gestures with a level hand near the top of the table. "And, yeah, we've been getting each other off since we knew what our dicks were for, that's _how_ we figured out what our dicks were for. And I know it's just kid stuff and we should've outgrown it, but--" Geralt shrugs, freshly uncomfortable at the thought of Vesemir's more pointed eyebrow-raisings and little comments.

"We didn't," is all he says. "We never outgrew each other, even when we went out on the Path. But it wasn't all the time, either, just when we happened to meet up, when we both..." Geralt gestures vaguely, not wanting to go into the never-spoken complex calculations that go into deciding whether it's to be one of _those_ nights--who needs what and how long it's been and who else is around and how the whole night feels. 

"It wasn't a _love_ thing. It was never like that, neither of us ever had to woo the other or any of that. But just because it's not love doesn't mean it's _nothing_ , either. And he--it's not as easy for him," Geralt says, squirming a little at voicing an element of those calculations which they _never_ allude to. "No one sings songs about him, they don't know his name or look at him the way people look at me. He didn't have a love like Yen, or even a regular thing with some patient woman. But he's always had me, when we could manage to line up with each other."

When they weren't hundreds of miles apart on the path; when Geralt wasn't dead, or missing, or suffering amnesia, or avoiding him because nothing made sense anymore and he didn't want to see Eskel and find that that didn't make sense either. He couldn't have borne it if after all the times when they've fit right back together no matter how long apart, this time they didn't.

"He's never betrayed me," Geralt tries again. "And he's never failed me. And if I haven't done as much for him, it's never been because I didn't try, or didn't care. And I _won't_ tell him, after all these years, all our _lives_ , that he can't ever have sex again with the person who knows him best, just because I'm fool enough to fall in love with someone who doesn't understand that."

Geralt maybe got a little loud and furious at the end there; Emhyr is blinking at him, tilted back slightly in his chair like Geralt's voice pushed him there. Finally he says, "I... think I see."

He's frowning, really thinking. Geralt makes himself wait; there's no use trying to rush Emhyr. "And Yennefer... was unreasonable about this."

Geralt throws up his hands. "She said _never_ , not even if I was out on the Path with him and she was at home and I wouldn't be fucking her anyway. We were still both supposed to sleep cold, just because I love her. Loved her." It's easier to use the past tense when he's feeling aggrieved all over again.

Emhyr nods slowly. "And you... You said Yennefer was, or is, the love of your life. And with Eskel, it isn't love. What... what would you say it _is_ , then?"

Geralt grimaces. He tried to put it into a simple word for Yennefer, because he thought if he could just find the right words... but she'd hated the whole idea of it, had been starting to hate Geralt for it by the end of that fight, so maybe there was no word that could have helped. 

Emhyr, though... Emhyr hasn't said no yet. 

Geralt wants to say _brother_ , because he thinks other people mean something almost big and important enough when they use that word, and it means something different enough from _lover_. But people who have actual brothers of their blood think it's a bad thing to have sex with your brother, and Geralt doesn't want to open up that wasp's nest if he can avoid it.

And there are other words to cover pieces of it. _Loyalty_ and _trust_ and _friendship_. He thinks the one that maybe comes closest is _faith_ , because his unswerving certainty of Eskel's place in his life sounds almost the way some people seem to feel about their gods--and just as essential. But that makes for awkward comparisons too.

Geralt shrugs helplessly, turning up a hand. "Eskel. He's just... Eskel. He always has been, as much as I've always had two hands and a cock. What do you call it, when you refuse to cut off the best pieces of yourself?"

Emhyr's eyebrows rise, and he nods. "I do see, then, yes. Love requires a... separateness, in order to give love and have love returned, and between the two of you there is no space for that."

" _Yes_ ," Geralt says, almost lightheaded with the sudden surge of relief and trying to memorize those words that finally start to capture it. More than just thinking that he might not have to turn away from Emhyr before they can start, Emhyr's words finally settle what's been twisted up inside him for months, ever since Yen said all that stuff about Eskel and him, making him doubt things he could never have questioned otherwise. 

All at once he feels sure that it _will_ be the same when he sees Eskel again, because how could it not be? They're the same, they're part of each other. Of course they always come back to each other. "Yeah. Like that." 

Emhyr nods, frowns, then turns a tentative smile to Geralt. "Well. I do not wish you to amputate any part of yourself for my sake. I would resent that anyone else had ever made you feel you should, except that if you were still with Yennefer you would not be here with me. Perhaps I should send her flowers."

Geralt laughs again, and glances around. "You can probably spare a few, can't you."

Emhyr smiles. "If you don't require all of them strewn at your feet, then yes, I suppose I could."

Geralt snorts at the ridiculous image, but Emhyr probably _would_ do something like that, if he thought it would win him another inch in his campaign for Geralt's... favor. "I don't, no. They're pretty enough where they are."

Emhyr nods, and then his gaze goes to the table and--not Geralt's crotch, but the chair he's sitting on, and then around the garden, and Geralt realizes what he's looking for. The paths are gravel, the rosebushes full of thorns, the table and chairs too flimsy to bear much strain. 

"Speaking of where we are?" Geralt suggests, gathering himself to stand. 

Emhyr puts a hand out, still not quite touching him. They've discussed all of this, haggled over the terms and conditions, and still haven't _touched_ , except that accidental brush of knees. 

Emhyr stands, while Geralt stays seated where Emhyr wants him, only tilting his head back to watch as Emhyr steps close to tower over him. It shouldn't be a flattering angle, but all Geralt wants to do is go right on showing his throat; he tips his head back a little more than necessary, just to watch Emhyr seeing him doing it.

Emhyr lays his hand, very lightly, on Geralt's throat. "Before anything else," Emhyr says quietly. "Before we go inside. Before I touch you more than this."

Geralt swallows under the petal-light touch of a sword-calloused hand, and waits. 

"I know," Emhyr says, with careful deliberation. "That this, whatever we begin today, will not last forever. I know that the odds are against it lasting even until one or the other of us dies. So I accept, now, in advance, that the day will likely come when, whatever the reason, you will tell me it's finished--just as the time might come when I have to tell you so."

What he's saying, in so many words, is _I won't chain you here. I will let you go. I won't force this later because you agree to it now._

Geralt swallows again, harder, and licks his lips, but doesn't even try to speak.

"And until the day this ends," Emhyr goes on, his voice barely above a whisper but firm as a vow. "I will always, always be watchful to see if, even when you are not yet saying no to all of it, you may be telling me, _not this_ or _not now_. I trust that if I am not watchful enough, you will make it clear to me, because that is not something I will forgive myself for missing."

Geralt lets himself close his eyes, because he can't look Emhyr in the eye with the shadows of last night between them, and he knows that's what this is. Because of course he didn't say no last night, and of course Emhyr had to say it for him, because Emhyr hadn't wanted him like that, angry and unwilling. Because _Geralt_ hadn't wanted that, and Emhyr had to be the one to do something about it; Geralt hadn't even tried.

Geralt nods. Emhyr's thumb strokes lightly up to the bottom of his jaw, along the line of the vein. 

"Tell me," Emhyr says, even softer. "Are any of them still alive? Still in power?"

Geralt squeezes his eyes shut tighter. He doesn't want to think about those men and women, not here, not now. He certainly doesn't want to _talk_ about what happened, what a fool he was, what he couldn't, or at least didn't, escape. But Emhyr's not asking for that, after all. He asked a simple question, with a simple answer.

"No," Geralt says. He doesn't even have to think about it; he remembers when he noted the death of the last one, when the map was wiped clean of places he refused to take contracts for any money at all, places he had to warn the others away from.

Emhyr's hand tightens a little on Geralt's throat. "Did you have the privilege of killing any of them?"

Geralt huffs a breath and opens his eyes, meeting Emhyr's entirely serious gaze. "Also no."

"Alas," Emhyr says, without a hint of humor. 

His fingers slide away from Geralt's throat, coming up to lightly grip his chin, and then Emhyr bends to kiss him. 

The press of his lips is exactly as light and controlled as Emhyr's hand on his throat, and it feels no less like Emhyr taking possession. Geralt feels it through his whole body--a shock of heat, a promise of more in the feeling of Emhyr's body over his without making contact. He knows he's not supposed to push, not with Emhyr's hand on him like that, but he lets his lips part, inviting. His own hand is hovering in air, not quite grabbing hold of whatever part of Emhyr's body he can reach. 

Emhyr's tongue flirts with his open lips, a series of little almost-touches, and then Emhyr draws back, taking his hand from Geralt's chin to catch Geralt's hand. "Come inside."

Geralt doesn't hesitate.


	4. Chapter 4

Feeling precisely the same rush of exaltation that he often experiences after a successful treaty negotiation--which, after all, this _was_ , despite the unexpected concessions he had to make to secure it--Emhyr leads Geralt by the shortest route back toward the palace. He keeps hold of Geralt's hand all the way there, because Geralt hasn't tried to draw it away, and Emhyr is enjoying the warm weight of it, the way Geralt crooks his fingers just enough to be holding on in return without attempting to take control. 

A single chaste kiss and the touch of a hand shouldn't be enough to stir a man to the eagerness he feels thrumming through him. It's a good thing he has a triumph to justify it.

Their route toward Emhyr's rooms cuts through the private conservatory; Cirilla doesn't frequent the space, so he doubts Geralt has seen it before. That suspicion is confirmed by the wondering expression on Geralt's face as he takes in the walls and ceiling made of glass, the panes held in a gossamer tracery of steel, all of it shining in the sun. 

Geralt's expression only grows more wondering when they pass inside; the humid warmth doesn't seem to trouble him, but Emhyr can see him sniffing the air with interest as he looks around. Emhyr himself smells mostly dirt, with faint hints of citrus and a flower-smell he thinks is probably from whatever the spiky purple things are, growing nearest to the path they're walking on. He suspects that between a witcher's senses and the knowledge of botany potion-brewing requires, Geralt can pick out a great deal more. Emhyr thinks of asking him, but--another time. 

Geralt's gaze lights--just as Cirilla's did, the first time Emhyr brought her here--on the specially grafted fruit trees around the border of the room. They are currently bearing oranges and lemons and limes, all on the same tree, all the trees heavy with fruit. 

Emhyr releases his hand, and when that draws Geralt's attention back to him, he makes a flourishing gesture at the trees. "Go ahead. The fruit is there to be picked."

What Geralt actually does, when he walks over to the nearest tree, is press his face into its leaves and inhale so deeply Emhyr can hear it from where he stands on the central walkway. He suppresses a shiver, and a twitch of interest from his groin, at this confirmation of Geralt's sensuality. 

After several seconds, Geralt draws back to look at the sculpted shape of the tree. It is trimmed precisely to fit its space, half its boughs trained to grow against the glass while the rest make a neat half-sphere. 

Geralt deliberates for a moment, then plucks a ripe orange from the highest branch before returning to Emhyr, twisting the fruit this way and that to admire it even as he reaches out again for Emhyr's hand. As if he is perfectly content to be led by the hand, wherever Emhyr wants to take him. Certainly his ease and fascination is a world away from the grim intention to comply of the night before. And Geralt might be admirably able to keep a straight face when he chooses to and a competent liar when necessary, but he's no actor.

Emhyr cannot second guess himself and doubt Geralt's willingness even when it's clearly expressed, or he'll draw the previous night's poison into the day. Geralt's about-face might feel too good to be true, but from what he could read of Geralt's reactions, that is precisely how Geralt felt about Emhyr's offer out in the garden. Right now Emhyr has better things to do than contemplate why Geralt should be so overwhelmed by so modest an offer, but later... well, he will have many things to think about. Later. 

Right now they have a treaty to seal, in the oldest of ways. 

He is warm with anticipation, and his light summer clothing is beginning to feel like altogether too much covering Emhyr's skin, even now that they have passed from the conservatory into the cooler stone halls of the palace proper. He leads on, glancing back when the burst of citrus scent informs him that Geralt has broken the orange's peel. Geralt is somehow scoring the thing open with his thumb while holding it in the same hand. Emhyr doesn't realize he's staring until Geralt looks up at him with a smirk.

"Witcher skills. Useful for lots of things."

There is juice dripping down the side of his hand. Emhyr does not groan, nor does he press Geralt to the nearest available wall, not even when Geralt notices the direction of his gaze and licks his hand clean with his eyes on Emhyr. For a moment Emhyr can hardly see anything beyond the wet slide of his tongue, bright pink against the paleness of his skin.

Emhyr turns away again, tightening his grip on Geralt's hand, and leads him at a quick march to the nearest entrance to Emhyr's rooms.

"No interruptions," he snaps at the guard on duty, and the man nearly manages to keep his face expressionless as he salutes and falls back into position.

"Do you have time--" Geralt starts, and then, finally, Emhyr does have a sturdy bit of wall to shove him against, and the privacy to do it without hesitation. He stops Geralt's words with a kiss, harder and deeper than he'd permitted himself in the open air but scarcely less controlled. 

Geralt yields to it as sweetly as he had out in the garden, and it only make Emhyr press in harder against him, feeling the heat and strength of his body, the here-and-now-and-realness that is a little shocking every time Emhyr lets himself get this close to anyone. This is _happening_ , now, with Geralt. All his careful calculation of all the possibilities is collapsing into this one reality, this carnal exchange. Emhyr licks deep into Geralt's mouth, drowning in the heat of him, his taste, subtly different from anyone else he's ever kissed, something he may have the chance to learn well, to know above all others.

Emhyr's cock hardens as his mind skips ahead from the heady present to the entrancing immediate future. His thoughts are flooded with possibilities. His hand in Geralt's hair, Geralt on his knees, on his back, that insolent mouth filled deeper than kisses can, or reduced to incoherent moaning. The urge to make such plans into reality courses through his blood, tightening every muscle, but after only a few moments, Emhyr pulls back.

Pushing Geralt to yield more than kisses, more than his bared throat, is a more dangerous course than he'd imagined it could be, before last night. Even with Geralt's assurances, even with the present evidence of his pleasure in this role, Emhyr must go carefully. He dares not put a foot wrong, not the very first time; he must use this first chance to show Geralt that he will not set his own pleasure above Geralt's, will not make demands that won't be equally pleasing to both of them.

"I have all the time you want from me, for this," Emhyr says in answer to the question he hadn't let Geralt finish asking, his forehead against Geralt's, their mouths barely separated enough to speak, the air hot and damp between them. "So tell me, where would you like to begin?"

Geralt laughs a little, warm and low and pleased. "Making me guess after all?"

Emhyr can't resist kissing him for that, and can't resist ending the wet slide of their mouths with a sharp nip at Geralt's lower lip. "No. _I_ am declining to guess. I have too many plans; you must give me an objective."

"Mm," Geralt says, but he melts back a little more firmly against the wall, tipping his chin up--gaining a few inches' space to consider the matter. Emhyr grants it to him, but reaches down to take the halved orange from Geralt's unresisting hand while Geralt thinks.

Emhyr frees a section of the orange from the tidily perforated peel, scraping pith away with his thumbnail. It's perfect by the time Geralt opens his mouth to speak; Emhyr presses the fruit between his lips before he can make a sound. Geralt tries to glare, but his eyelids flutter and sink nearly shut when he bites into the fruit. Oranges are vanishingly rare in the North, prized and expensive and not nearly as good as this; Emhyr can almost taste it on Geralt's breath.

"Yes," Emhyr says, watching Geralt chew and swallow. "You could do with something sweet, couldn't you?"

Geralt opens his eyes, and a second later, he opens his mouth. Emhyr feeds him the next section of the orange, and the next, while he maps his course--something sweet, something easy and without any possibility of pain, this first time. It is easy enough to plan, and after the past hour Emhyr is more certain than ever that he need not resort to anything more studied to satisfy Geralt. Simple pleasures, simple truths, are more than he will ask for or expect.

"Would you like to lie down, my dear witcher? If you lean any harder into the wall you might go through it."

"Witchers, always making a mess," Geralt murmurs, but there's no bitterness in his voice, and he stands straight and presses a kiss to Emhyr's mouth, sticky and sweet and bright as the sun. Emhyr enjoys it for a moment, rewarding initiative with more kisses and an experimental caress down Geralt's spine that wins him a little catch in Geralt's breath. 

Emhyr ends it there and moves to let Geralt pass as he steps away from the wall. Geralt, after a glance toward Emhyr to ask direction or permission, heads toward the door that leads further into Emhyr's suite, clearly looking for the bed. 

There is one in the next room, raised up on a dais three steps above the floor, so covered in cloth-of-gold draperies and covers that it's scarcely discernible as something other than sculpture, or possibly architecture. There is an emblem of the sun, solid gold, on the wall at its head, and the headboard is carved with symbols of Nilfgaard--all gilded, of course.

Geralt looks from Emhyr to the bed and back, then says, "This is some... ceremonial bed, isn't it. You don't actually ever use it."

"I might have," Emhyr says, trying not to think of his old dream of Pavetta here in Nilfgaard, of the younger sisters or brothers Cirilla might have had, conceived under all the most fortunate omens, to bring blessings on their lives. "In other circumstances. But no, I never have."

Geralt studies him a few seconds longer, then gives the tiniest of nods and turns to walk on, through the State Bedroom and into the room beyond--a dressing room, storage for his daily clothing as well as a low cot for use by his valet. His guardsmen, when they are required to stay close to him through the night, stay awake or sleep on the floor.

Geralt pauses to consider the cot, but gives a tiny shake of his head and walks on from the dim dressing room into the brightness of another bedroom. Emhyr sees him spot the signs of actual habitation here--slight spots of wear on the rug and chairs, where Emhyr has kept the pieces he finds comfortable rather than allowing them to be replaced with newer, pristine versions; wood laid for a fire in the hearth, and candles around the room, a few of them with blackened wicks, though all wax drops have been cleaned away.

And the bed is merely a very sturdy piece of antique furniture, a heavy wood frame with only the lightest curtains in place for this summer heat, gossamer layers tied back to the posts for the day. Geralt walks straight to it, running a hand appreciatively over the coverlet before flipping it back, more neatly than Emhyr would have expected, to reveal the linen sheets and the mere handful of pillows.

Geralt runs a hand down the sheets, then bends until his face is nearly buried in them, and inhales just as he had with his face in the leaves of the citrus tree. Emhyr feels a rush of heat--lust and a kind of embarrassment he hasn't felt in a long time--at the thought of what Geralt might smell there.

Then Geralt turns to face Emhyr, and with a smirk, flings himself backward. He seems to exert no effort, but lands full length across the bed--only his feet, still encased in very slightly dusty boots, hang off. Geralt tucks one arm under his head and watches Emhyr, lounging with an insouciance that is, if not entirely feigned, certainly very deliberately displayed.

A question, waiting for an answer. Emhyr smiles slightly, shaking his head, and sets down the rest of Geralt's orange on a convenient table before he comes to stand at the edge of the bed, between Geralt's feet. 

"Very tidily done, in fact," Emhyr says, and watches Geralt's face as he puts his hands to Geralt's boot and tugs it off. 

The slight widening of his eyes, and the more obvious widening of his smile, tell Emhyr he's gotten that one right; Geralt ought to expect better of a lover, no matter his rank, than to balk at helping to remove his boots, but clearly Geralt takes very little for granted in these affairs. 

Emhyr tosses Geralt's boot out of the way, earning a puff of laughter from Geralt, who must have expected more fastidiousness than that. Tidiness has its place, but in Emhyr's experience its place is mostly on the list of _things the servants take care of_ ; for himself, he prefers to keep a firm grasp of his priorities.

With that in mind, he tugs off Geralt's other boot, then plants one hand casually on Geralt's shin for balance while he removes his own. Geralt's toes--still covered in lightweight cotton socks--flex at the touch, and Emhyr finds himself wanting to kiss them. 

He takes a deep, steadying breath and tosses his own boot away after Geralt's. _Pace yourself. This is only the first sortie. You cannot win the war today._

He removes Geralt's socks with two sharp tugs and tosses them after the boots, then removes his own just the same.

"I'm starting to think I see where this is going," Geralt says.

Emhyr raises his eyebrows. "I should hope so, or else I'd wonder what you and Eskel have failed to figure out in the last ninety years."

Geralt lets out a startled burst of laughter, eyes going wide for just a moment, before his lids droop lazily again. There, an objective achieved: Emhyr has acknowledged Eskel, and Geralt's connection to him, while Geralt is in his bed. It seems to contribute its fraction toward reassuring Geralt; there is an iota more ease when he relaxes into the sheets again, and he's still smiling as Emhyr finally moves onto the bed.

"Anything I _shouldn't_ take off you, while I'm about it?" Emhyr inquires, kneeling at Geralt's side and letting his eyes roam up and down his body, considering his next move. 

"Just this," Geralt says, and closes his hand on the wolf medallion resting on his chest.

"Of course," Emhyr agrees, then reaches up, behind Geralt's head, to pull free the tie in his hair. Emhyr has nothing equivalent to remove from his own hair, so he proceeds directly to bending over Geralt for a kiss, running a hand lightly through Geralt's hair, helpfully tilted up to give him access.

He takes Geralt's belt next, neatly setting aside the knife he carries on it and paying no particular attention to where it disappears to while he's removing his own. He tosses his own knife with a practiced flick of his wrist, and it lands neatly on top of the headboard, out of the way but in easy reach. 

He tugs down Geralt's trousers next, and feels something between satisfaction and smugness to see that he's wearing tailored silk drawers beneath, for protection from the roughness of his trousers. Emhyr recognizes the work of the palace seamstresses, and is hard-pressed not to feel as if this is a gift Geralt has accepted directly from Emhyr to wear against his skin, rather than merely a part of his chamberlain's efforts to see the Nordling properly outfitted while he resides here.

He can more properly take some credit for the bulge of Geralt's cock pushing up under them, and the spreading wet spot. He wants to touch, taste, to press his face there and breathe in, but he only runs a hand over Geralt's flank and says, "These are nice."

Geralt smiles and rolls his hips. "As nice as yours?" 

"No," Emhyr says frankly, and peels his own trousers down to display the fact that he's not engaging in some misguided arrogance about how his cock compares to Geralt's. His drawers are black silk, embroidered down the sides with golden suns. Geralt laughs again, delighted at what must seem an unimaginable profligacy to him. Emhyr makes a mental note to order a similar set for Geralt--white silk with wolf's heads embroidered in silver. 

For now, though, he turns to the lacing of Geralt's light doublet, loosening it enough to pull it off in one go, shirt and all, leaving Geralt in nothing but his drawers and medallion. Emhyr means to toss the doublet away with everything else, but it drops from his fingers to the bed in front of him, while Emhyr is seized with equally violent surges of lust and tenderness.

He's never seen so much of Geralt's skin before, not when he could actually look; he supposes he must have caught a glimpse last night, as Geralt was shirtless, but Emhyr's focus was on everything but ogling Geralt's body then. Emhyr knew that he must be physically exquisite, with all that strength and power, and he had even been aware that Geralt was, in Mererid's words, _covered in scars_.

None of that prepared him to see Geralt like this, simultaneously stunningly attractive and showing so much evidence of pain and damage. Emhyr can't breathe for a moment, can only stare, wanting to touch every inch of Geralt for his own pleasure, and to soothe every hurt, years or decades too late. 

He finally drags his gaze up to Geralt's face, and finds Geralt watching him with an almost puzzled expression, smiling slightly but studying Emhyr as intently as Emhyr had been studying his body.

It takes a few seconds for Emhyr's dazed mind to work out why. 

"How do people usually react, then?" Because Geralt's expression indicates that Emhyr didn't give him the reaction he expected.

Geralt's smile widens a little even as he shrugs. Emhyr can't help glancing down to see the way that movement ripples through his bared body. 

"You'd be surprised how many people don't notice the scars when they're focused on getting laid," Geralt says easily--as though it's merely a piece of amusing trivia, that so many people have had the privilege of seeing him this way and still cared so little for him. "And when they do--horror, mostly. Or disgust. Reminds them that no true human could have survived all this."

Emhyr wonders for a second how Eskel reacts, and then realizes that, of course, Eskel is also a witcher, and has been at it just as long as Geralt has. They must be like two men who collect obscure wines or ancient artifacts, who fall instantly into comparing the newest additions to their collections any time they meet.

Well. If that means that not even the most important person in Geralt's life looks at Geralt's scars and sees that he has been hurt and should be repaid in pleasure and affection anything else that will make him smile, then Emhyr will have sole possession of that much at least.

Geralt reaches up and tugs at the hem of Emhyr's doublet, and Emhyr gently swats his hand away and takes it off, throwing it and Geralt's off the bed together. That makes it Geralt's turn to lose a piece of clothing, and his drawers are all that's left. Geralt wriggles his hips to draw Emhyr's attention to the right place, but doesn't unfold his arms from behind his head.

Emhyr tugs the tie loose and pulls Geralt's drawers down and off, scrupulously focusing on the garment and not what its absence reveals. He removes his own as well, and only then moves to kneel over Geralt, straddling his hips; his hand goes to Geralt's stiff cock immediately, and Geralt's eyes close at the first stroke.

Emhyr lets himself look down, then, to see just what he's dealing with. Geralt is big but not ungainly, and attention to the usually-sensitive spots makes him twitch, muscles jumping with the effort of suppressing a more powerful reaction. He's sensitive, eager. Emhyr's own cock is hardening at the sight of it, the little sounds that break Geralt's breathing, the feel of silky-smooth skin over firmness, the scents of sex and sweat rising up between them. He glances up and sees the flush spreading down Geralt's chest, and Geralt's eyes are still closed, his face turned to the side.

Trying to endure this. Emhyr knows that in all likelihood it's only about not wanting to react so fast to something so simple, but he feels a chill down his spine regardless. He lets go, lowering himself over Geralt as Geralt's eyes open, as Geralt's lips part, and then it's easy to kiss him, to lick the bitten place on his lip with his hand cradling Geralt's cheek.

It's certainly no hardship to be stretched full-length on Geralt, skin to skin with him everywhere, feeling all the little movements of that powerful body under him. They're well-matched in height; lying like this Geralt's cock presses up against his belly, his own beside it. Geralt's startlement eases under Emhyr's kisses, mouth opening again to yield to him even while his hips begin to rock, seeking friction against Emhyr's body. 

Emhyr pulls back when Geralt's movements under him turn urgent, just far enough to look into his eyes. His hand is still on Geralt's cheek in a lingering caress. Geralt has his eyes squeezed shut again, and Emhyr breathes, "Look at me, Geralt."

Geralt lets out a sharp breath but opens his eyes and looks up, a flush on his cheeks and his eyes going glassy, and he manages to say, "It's just--been a while."

Emhyr tsks and kisses him again, matching his movements with Geralt's just to feel like he's giving Geralt a little more than a friendly body to rub off against--although perhaps he needs that more than anything more elaborate, right now. Emhyr nuzzles against his cheek, listening to Geralt's rough breathing, riding his thrusts as he would a trotting horse, and murmurs, "Come for me, witcher. I have no wish to make you wait."

Geralt makes a wounded noise and his arms are abruptly around Emhyr, pulling him down against Geralt as Geralt pushes up against him; Emhyr tenses hard for an instant, then relaxes, letting himself be held, letting Geralt take his pleasure against Emhyr's body. Geralt's head is tipped back, giving Emhyr access to his throat, and Emhyr takes the invitation, kissing along the line of the vein, brushing his lip across a scar again and again to feel the difference. He can smell, faintly, the same shaving soap he uses himself, nearly lost under Geralt's sweat.

"Fuck," Geralt breathes, " _fuck,_ Emhyr--" 

Whatever Geralt was about to say is interrupted, or perhaps said for him by his body, as Geralt thrusts up against Emhyr once more and spends in hard pulses, his cock jerking between them. Emhyr continues kissing his throat until Geralt's body eases down from that crisis, the grip of his arms slackening, the body under him softening.

Well, most of it. Emhyr pushes up on one arm so he can look, even as he rocks his own hips down into Geralt, seeing the evidence of Geralt's completion smeared over them both, the smell of it sharp on the air between them. Geralt's cock, still hard, jerks at the brush of Emhyr's alongside it.

Geralt's hand shifts from Emhyr's back to his arse, grabbing firmly; Emhyr allows himself to be stilled and kisses Geralt again, softly. "Been a while, you said?"

Geralt looks almost sheepish. "It's not just--this just, uh, happens sometimes."

Emhyr raises an eyebrow.

Geralt rolls his eyes. "A lot of--yeah, okay, basically all the time unless I'm in bad shape, but--"

"How many times you do you suppose you need to spend before you'll be satisfied?" Emhyr means it to be a plain question, but he's already twitching against Geralt and his tone comes out speculative, betraying how much he'd like to find out for himself. 

It is not at all disappointing to know that that particular rumor about witchers is accurate. 

Geralt says, "You have other stuff to do today, don't you?" Emhyr gives him an unimpressed look at the weak deflection, and Geralt shrugs and says, "It's not a big deal, I don't _need_ \--"

Emhyr stops his mouth with a kiss, this one made a bit clumsy by Geralt trying harder than usual to keep speaking. Still, he gets in line eventually, kissing back with a barely-leashed urgency more suited to a man who hasn't come at all than a man who's forced Emhyr to stop rubbing against him because he's still too sensitive to bear it.

"Perhaps I need," Emhyr murmurs, when Geralt's grip on him has loosened and Geralt is starting to squirm under him again. "To know I haven't left you unsatisfied. How should I concentrate on anything else if I left you wanting in my bed?"

Geralt shudders under him, and when Emhyr pushes up out of the kiss and out of body contact, Geralt lets him, tucking his arms behind his head again. He spreads his legs easily when Emhyr makes to move between them, curling his hips up to expose himself in silent offering. 

Emhyr shakes his head. He is eager to get to that, but he's already decided on his course for this afternoon: nothing but pleasure of the most uncomplicated kind. He pushes Geralt's hips back down and settles between his thighs, curling a hand around Geralt's cock as he bends to taste it.

Geralt makes a startled sound that might have been his name, but breaks off at the stroke of Emhyr's tongue. His cock is wet, already smeared with spend and sweat, settling the thick scent of sex on the back of his tongue. Emhyr hums approvingly and carries on licking, stroking, getting a feel for Geralt and his reactions.

Geralt is once again struggling to be still, but when Emhyr looks up, Geralt's eyes are open wide and fixed on him in fascination. 

"What lucky bastards," Geralt breathes, "have you been practicing on, your majesty?"

Emhyr snorts, and presses his tongue slowly and wetly against the head of Geralt's cock, earning himself a spurt pre-come, before he answers. "None who mattered. But it's not a complex operation."

"Isn't it," Geralt says, and his hand comes down to brush at the wet corner of Emhyr's mouth, and the calloused touch is light and rough at once. "Gods, Emhyr--"

Emhyr gets back to work, redoubling his efforts; Geralt is altogether more capable of coherent speech than Emhyr would like to see him just now. 

Emhyr closes his eyes, the better to focus on the weight and heat of Geralt in his mouth, the taste of him, so intense that Emhyr's mouth is watering against it. He responds to every lick, every slide of lips, and Emhyr wants to learn every minute variation. It doesn't take long before Emhyr finds the rhythm that makes Geralt's breathing go ragged, makes muscle go hard under Emhyr's hand as Geralt resists thrusting up into Emhyr's mouth. Emhyr moves down, instead, taking more, until Geralt's hand slides into his hair, holding on as if he's not sure whether to push or pull. 

Emhyr sucks him harder, bringing his other hand to Geralt's balls--tense and tight, already close, which makes it easy for him to press a finger behind them, stroking over sweat-damp skin to find the right place to stroke.

Geralt curses, tugs lightly at Emhyr's hair--warning, not insistence--and Emhyr knows he's found it. He draws back just enough to prevent any mishaps, still sucking at the head of Geralt's cock and stroking the rest with one hand, rubbing between his legs with the other, watching and listening for every sign as Geralt's control cracks and breaks. 

Geralt thrusts up toward him, not so hard or fast that Emhyr can't move with him, exulting in earning this reaction. He sucks harder, works his hands faster, riding out a few more ragged thrusts, and it's not long before Geralt is spending in Emhyr's mouth. 

Emhyr lets his mouth slacken enough that it doesn't fill to the choking point with Geralt's release, and the feeling of spend leaking past his lips is as filthy as it must look. He keeps working Geralt's cock until he lets out something like a _whine_ and tugs at Emhyr's hair again, harder this time.

Geralt keeps pulling after Emhyr's mouth is off his cock, and Emhyr stretches up over him again, not bothering to wipe his lips clean before Geralt draws him into an almost frantic kiss. Geralt takes his mouth, licking roughly inside, taking back the taste of himself from Emhyr's tongue. As if there is no other way he can be sure that just happened and needs the further evidence of Emhyr's mouth--or as if he thinks it might never happen again. 

Emhyr lies over him and leans into the contact, letting him have the hurried kisses. Geralt's cock seems to be softening a little, and when Geralt finally lets Emhyr pick his head up, he sees his witcher looking closer to sated, soft-eyed and smiling with reddened lips. 

"C'mere," he says, slurring a little, so Emhyr kisses him again. This earns him a lingering open-mouthed kiss and then an exasperated huff of breath. 

"No," Geralt says, and then his hand is between them, wrapping big and hot and hard around Emhyr's cock, the sudden stimulation jolting through Emhyr's body like lightning. " _Come. Here._ It's your turn."

Emhyr closes his eyes and takes a deep, careful breath, and then gives Geralt what he wants. Geralt stays on his back, encouraging Emhyr up his body until Emhyr is kneeling over his chest and Geralt can bring Emhyr's cock to his kiss-bruised lips. 

The first brush of them makes Emhyr gasp, and Geralt looks up at him, smirking a little before he opens his mouth to suck just at the tip. Emhyr groans, keeping still with an effort, and Geralt pulls off--slowly, with a lingering lick that gives Emhyr plenty of time to take in the sight of his cock dark and straining against the soft pink of Geralt's tongue--to say, sweetly, "Been a while?"

"Yes," Emhyr says, a little sharply, and Geralt flashes him a wide smile and brings his mouth back to Emhyr's cock. 

Emhyr keeps himself still with an effort as Geralt takes him deeper, despite the awkward angle; the pleased gleam of Geralt's eyes, as much as the wet sucking heat of his mouth, have Emhyr aflame with the urge to _take_ , to own him, to--

Geralt doesn't pull off again, but he pauses with just the head of Emhyr's cock in his mouth and brings one hand to Emhyr's hip, tugging at it with an unmistakable meaning. _Go ahead_.

Emhyr groans at that. "I know I can't actually hurt you, but--"

Geralt sucks, but doesn't take Emhyr any deeper, just watching and waiting. His tongue teases the very end of Emhyr's cock and he feels himself spurting pre-come into Geralt's mouth; Geralt's eyes sink shut for a moment in what looks very much like pleasure.

"Fuck," Emhyr groans. "Yes, _yes_ ," and then he pushes in, but slowly, carefully. His cock nudges at the back of Geralt's throat, and he feels the slick tightness of Geralt swallowing around him, but Geralt doesn't choke and doesn't pull back. Emhyr withdraws, pulling against wet hot suction all the way, and thrusts in again, quicker this time. He's quicker again the next, and it seems to take no time at all before he's steadily fucking into Geralt's mouth, the filthy wet sound of it louder than his own breathing or the pounding of his own heart.

"Close," he warns, the best he can do, when he feels the crisis approaching, his whole body tensing with it. Geralt smiles with his eyes and doesn't move, letting Emhyr push into him harder, harder, until he's spending on Geralt's tongue--

And then Geralt tips his head back, mouth falling open, his hand on Emhyr's cock pulling the rest of his spend from him in tight, quick strokes. It spurts across Geralt's lips, lands on his cheeks, over his closed eyes, and Emhyr doesn't know if the oaths on his tongue are curses or reverence as he stares down at his lover's face striped with his seed.

The only thing better is when Geralt opens his eyes in a few lazy blinks, his eyelashes wet and sticking together. He looks up at Emhyr, smiling, so pleased with himself that Emhyr finds himself laughing breathlessly as he bends down to kiss him.


	5. Chapter 5

Geralt thinks that making Emhyr laugh into a kiss like that shouldn't feel as good as being on the verge of coming for a third time, but since it's all happening together he figures there's no point worrying about it. His whole body is humming, that oversaturated pitch of pleasure that he gets when he doesn't wait long between rounds.

He'd been jerking himself off while he was sucking Emhyr, but with Emhyr kissing him he keeps his hand still, waiting for he-has-no-idea-what, still just teetering on that exquisite edge of _almost_ and _maybe too much_ and _too good not to_. 

Then Emhyr's mouth leaves his and he feels Emhyr's lips brushing through one of the wet spots on his cheek Emhyr's tongue follows, and he takes his time licking his own spend from Geralt's skin.

Geralt can't hold back then, just lets out a groan and finishes himself in a few quick, tight strokes, and the rush of it wipes his thoughts blank for a few glorious seconds. When he opens his eyes, Emhyr has picked his head up to look down between their bodies at Geralt's hand on his cock, or maybe at the come cooling all over his chest. There's a lot, by now.

That's probably it, because when he meets Geralt's eyes, after another sweeping look over his face, he says, with a hint of a smile, "Well, _now_ you've certainly made a mess, witcher."

Geralt grins, looking up at him--it's a mess well-earned, and one to be proud of--and doesn't let himself feel even a tiny bit of disappointment that he didn't get another _my dear witcher_ just then. 

Emhyr bows his head to brush another kiss over Geralt's lips, then straightens up. He moves away from Geralt, getting off the bed entirely, and Geralt rolls onto his side to watch Emhyr walking across the room, seemingly unconscious of his nakedness, as sure in his skin as he would be in armor and a crown.

Geralt's cock gives a hopeful little twitch. Geralt does not touch it, resolving to save that for after Emhyr's washed up and dressed and left him, whether here in Emhyr's bed or hustled off to his own rooms. 

But when Emhyr gets to the washbasin on its stand in the corner of the room, he picks up basin, jug, and cloth, and brings them all back to the bed, pausing only to pick up what's left of the orange. He settles beside Geralt, pours the water, wets the cloth, and sets to work cleaning Geralt's face.

It's somehow as desperately arousing as Emhyr stretched naked over him and licking the mess away. The water is warm, and Emhyr is thorough but gentle. The brush of his thumb, holding Geralt's eyelid down while he swipes the cloth over it, sends a strange shiver through him. He's not even sure it's lust, but it's some kind of wanting, and he turns his face toward Emhyr's touch, as helpless as a flower chasing the sun.

"There," Emhyr murmurs when he's satisfied, his voice a low rumble that Geralt feels like a caress. 

Geralt realizes he's had his eyes closed since Emhyr cleaned them, and blinks up at him. Emhyr has another section of the orange in his hand, and offers it; Geralt takes it from his fingers and continues watching quietly while he chews and swallows. Emhyr turns to work his way down Geralt's body, cleaning Geralt's chest in broader swipes. 

He gives Geralt an amused look as he rinses out the cloth and wets it again. And again.

But he doesn't scold or complain, even teasingly, any more than he did about having to take Geralt's boots off him, having to undress Geralt right down to his skin. This is, apparently, all part of whatever Emhyr's decided he's doing here..

Geralt's heart squeezes oddly at the intent face Emhyr makes, rubbing down the crease of his hip, tending to him with such unnecessary care, just because he wants to. It's not much longer before Emhyr is wrapping the warm damp cloth around his cock, which gives a jerk at the contact.

Emhyr smiles up at him, and rubs him through the wet cloth, warm and just a tiny bit rough; the friction makes Geralt's head go light. "Once more?" 

Geralt shakes his head, not even really tempted; it feels like too much right now--too soon or just too raw, with Emhyr watching him and Geralt hungry for more of something he can't name, something that's not as simple as sex. 

Emhyr accepts the refusal and finishes his cleaning in a few more swipes of the cloth, then rinses again and gives himself a few efficient swipes. That done, he settles by Geralt's side, not touching but within easy reach, as if he has no intention of either leaving or evicting Geralt from his bed anytime soon. He picks up the rest of the orange, and Geralt opens his mouth for the next section.

"I should have asked before," Emhyr says softly. "Outside. But... you asked me, why you. So, why me?"

Geralt blinks up at him, looking him over. Emhyr's posture is perfect even when he's naked and sitting on a bed, like his spine doesn't know how to be anything but straight. Geralt swallows the last of the orange and says, very slowly, "You're _Emhyr var Emreis_."

"Emperor of North and South," Emhyr agrees. "Deithwen Addan yn Carn aep Morvudd. But that was not a point in my favor last night."

Geralt winces a little at the reminder of how wrong he'd gotten everything. "That wasn't..." 

Emhyr just offers him another orange slice and waits in silence, so Geralt takes the tidbit and with it the offer of a few extra seconds to work out how to say it. 

"Last night I thought you'd decided that being who you are meant that I was a thing you could use when you liked," Geralt says. "Today you told me you..." He hesitates over the words. What Emhyr said to him-- _I desire you, like you, trust you, feel something for you_ \--is, he is fairly certain, less than what Emhyr truly feels. But even now, stretched out beside him naked and almost-sated and carefully cleaned by Emhyr's own hands, he dares to say only, "You care for me. Me, as--me, all of me. Not a warm body, not a useful witcher. You care enough to let Ciri know it, and you're _you_. You could have anyone, you're--" 

Geralt gestures helplessly at him, and hopes he's not going to have to try to describe the way his cock tends to take notice of the most powerful or most dangerous person in the room. Emhyr has been one or the other, if not both, for all the time Geralt's known him.

"I desire you," Geralt finally says, falling back on Emhyr's simple, straightforward phrases. "And I like you more than half of the time, and I trust you more than most. And you've got oranges growing in your house."

Emhyr snorts at that last and gives him another piece of the orange. "And what do you want from me?"

Geralt thinks back over what they agreed on in the garden. "You already said I can travel, go back out on the Path, and come back to you. And you said you wouldn't make me choose between you and Eskel. And I won't be your dirty freak secret."

Emhyr's lips tighten a little, but he says, "Yes, we did agree to that. But what do you want from _me_ , when we are together? How are we to be together?"

Geralt looks from his naked body to Emhyr's, and says, "Sex. Talking with you, and with you and Ciri. Training with you sometime, if you'd like that. I, uh..." Geralt stretches a little, shifting closer to Emhyr. "I like sharing a bed, if you'd like company sometimes. Just lying together, maybe talking in the dark, sleeping close, it's..." Emhyr brushes his knuckles against Geralt's cheek and nods, and Geralt swallows further explanations.

He tries to think of anything else he can offer into the silence. Emhyr feeds him another piece of the orange, and... well. There's that. 

"You didn't say, exactly," Geralt says, watching Emhyr closely. "But I know you want to give me things."

Emhyr goes still; he knows Geralt's going to ask for something that might not be easy, now. Geralt is pretty sure it won't be. Emhyr being who he is and Geralt being _what_ he is, it's something Emhyr will probably fuck up at some point. Still, he might as well get it out there now.

"I don't mind you giving me things," Geralt says. "As long as they're gifts, and not payment."

Emhyr's expression darkens and Geralt adds, "I don't mean for sex, or anything like this. I know that's not what we're doing. But after you've been giving me things a while, you might feel like it's okay to ask me for something in return. Kill someone, or torture them, or..."

Emhyr winces at that; of course he can see how it would happen as well as Geralt can. 

"And I don't know if I'll tell you no," Geralt says softly. That's overstating it, really. He knows he won't; he never has been good at refusing people he cares for. "It'll probably seem like you have a good reason, like it's important enough to justify it. Maybe it even will be. But if we're talking about what I want--I don't want being your favorite to turn into being your favorite weapon."

"I..." Emhyr frowns into the air, hands in his own lap, a significant few inches between their bodies. "I can't promise not to ask. Because someday something probably will be that important. But I will ask you to choose to do what is necessary because it is necessary, and not because you are mine and I ask it of you." His mouth twists up into a mirthless smile and he adds, "I hope."

Geralt sighs in agreement. They've both seen too much, made too many compromises, to imagine they won't go down that road again. But privately, just between them, they can hope.

Geralt closes the little distance, curling an arm over Emhyr's thighs and around him, tucking his nose against the fold of Emhyr's hip. Nilfgaardians, with all their baths, always smell like perfumed ghosts to Geralt's heightened senses, accustomed to the richer body-scents of people from the North. Right now, though, Emhyr smells warm and alive, vivid with sex and sweat. Human and fully present for Geralt to hold. 

"In any case," Emhyr adds in a lighter tone, settling his hand on the arm Geralt has wrapped around him. "I am abdicating within the year, and then I will be merely a very rich and formerly-powerful man. My range of problems to ask your help in solving may become much more... localized, then."

Geralt thinks of Corvo Bianco, his new-granted land of no strategic significance, and the bed there that he's never shared with anyone. It wouldn't be enough for a man who meant to make use of that golden spectacle in the other room, but for the man who chooses these plain linen sheets to sleep on, and to bring his favorite to... it might be enough. It might even be a home, if they keep going back there.

There are plenty of beds, not just that one he's never shared. There's room for a lot of people to keep coming back there and always find a place waiting for them; Eskel will always be welcome.

"I want to go to Toussaint," Geralt tells him, twisting to rest his cheek on his arm, so he can actually look Emhyr in the eye. "After you're through here. I want you to come with me."

Emhyr smiles down at him, and runs his fingers through Geralt's hair, once and again. "I should be delighted, my dear witcher, to have your roof over my head."

Geralt smiles, feeling as if he's already gotten everything he could want.

* * *

Emhyr manages to spend nearly an hour away from Geralt, pretending that he is paying any sort of attention to his duties, before Cirilla finds him. She has a delighted smile on her face, and Emhyr can't help smiling back.

"I can't find Geralt anywhere," she says, taking a seat beside him. "Do you know where he is?"

The emperor's private chambers are heavily warded against portals, scrying, and any other magics that might be used to intrude. Emhyr had locked the door behind him when he left Geralt drowsing naked in his bed, a fourth climax having finally rendered him limp in all senses. Since Cirilla would be able to find Geralt in an instant if he were anywhere in Nilfgaard _other_ than Emhyr's bed, the question appears to be entirely rhetorical.

He says simply, "Yes."

Cirilla's grin widens. "Wow. You guys didn't waste any time."

Emhyr tilts his head in agreement, staring at the papers before him without seeing a word. Thinking on it, he doesn't believe there could have been anything between them--nothing that would have been worth the having--before this afternoon. So, no, they wasted no time. 

"And," Cirilla waves a hand lightly, matching the airiness of her words. "You're going to be better to him than anybody's ever been before, right? You're not going to make me rewrite time so that you never had a chance to hurt him?"

Emhyr looks over at her. He's not sure of the exact extent of Cirilla's powers--he doesn't think Cirilla is, for that matter, when they will surely only grow as she matures and hones her skills--but it does not have the sound of a bluff.

Cirilla glances around the room and says, "I didn't come back in time to tell myself to stop you, so I guess not. Good."

"Is that... something you do?" Emhyr asks, his mind involuntarily spinning a hundred scenarios in which such a skill would--will--make her an unconquerable empress. 

"Not yet," Cirilla says blithely. "Nothing's been worth possibly upsetting the balance of time yet, and from what I can tell it would be a nasty drain of my power. So it's a good thing you're not going to drive me to it."

"Indeed," Emhyr says, and does not allow himself to contemplate the possibility of a future in which Cirilla is not available, or able, to warn her past self to avert some disaster. 

Cirilla lounges in her chair, smiling sunnily and showing no sign of intending to leave his side anytime soon. He suspects that she means to follow him back to Geralt unless Geralt makes himself available to her cheerful scrutiny first. This will probably not be for the purpose of warning Geralt that she might destroy the orderly flow of time if he mistreats Emhyr, though he supposes she might go through those motions, for the sake of appearing even-handed.

After another moment Emhyr gives up on doing anything more useful to the empire and sits back to study Cirilla. She beams at him. "I really am happy for you both."

Emhyr nods, thinking of the shadow of doubt in his own happiness. Cirilla can likely tell him more than anyone can--possibly even more than she'll know she is telling. "May I ask you a question?"

Cirilla nods, seeming to catch his serious tone.

"I am hopeful that Geralt will be happy to stay here in Nilfgaard for some time yet," Emhyr says slowly, picking his way carefully across this ground. He does not want to hint at anything Cirilla may not already know, and that certainly includes the reason he wants to ask her these questions. "But he is a very long way from all he knows, here--far from his Path and purpose. You and I are much occupied with our duties, and he is too much alone. Can you think of anyone whose company he might wish for, who might be willing to come and visit?"

He scarcely has the question out before Cirilla says, "Eskel would, at least for a little while, if we can catch him between contracts. There's a lot of work for a witcher."

"Eskel," Emhyr says, not wishing to feign too much ignorance. "His best friend among the witchers--he would only stay a little while, you think?"

Cirilla shrugs, her expression thoughtful. "He'll probably stay longer if he thinks Geralt needs him, but if Geralt's just lounging around taking baths and eating grapes he'll start grumbling about going soft after about a week and head out looking for a contract."

Emhyr nods slowly. "Would he invite Geralt to join him?"

"Oh, no," Cirilla says, and then stops and shakes her head, smiling a little. "Well. I guess he might, now."

Emhyr raises his eyebrows. "Now?"

Cirilla glances at him and away, that fond smile fading, and when she speaks she seems to be choosing her words with care. "When I was at Kaer Morhen with Geralt, the other witchers--the ones who were still alive by then, and who were on speaking terms with each other--spent a lot of time there too. They all helped to train me, and... I think they all had this sense that they had something to guard, while I was there. But they had to go out on contracts sometimes, to make money, and because people needed witchers. Even Geralt went, sometimes."

Emhyr nods. 

"Lambert and Coen went the most, and Vesemir almost never. Eskel usually went for a couple of months in the summer and then on and off if there was a need in spring and fall--we were all there through the winter together; it wasn't worth trying to get down out of the mountains then.

"The thing is, Geralt would never leave, not for anything, while Eskel was gone--and if Geralt wasn't there, Eskel wouldn't leave. I remember once, Eskel and Vesemir and I were the only ones at Kaer Morhen, and these people came, desperate for help--some sort of vampire was preying on their village, I don't remember what it turned out to be. But they'd been traveling days to try to get a witcher to come. Geralt and Lambert and Coen were all too far away to be found. Obviously Eskel should have gone, Vesemir hardly ever went out on contracts, but... he didn't."

She goes quiet for a moment, frowning down at her hands, while Emhyr does his best to hear the true thread of this story, not just her words. He thinks he can see the shape of it, and it does nothing to shake his certainty that he stands no more chance than Yennefer did of coming between these men, were he fool enough to try.

"It sounds like nothing, when I try to put it into words; I suppose you'd have to know them to see it for what it was. But Eskel's not like Geralt, stubborn and putting up a fight all the time, and Vesemir was their teacher as well as mine; they'd known him all their lives and they all treated him as Master of Kaer Morhen. Vesemir turned to Eskel, probably to give some advice about the vampire or say something about how long he'd be gone, and Eskel just--wouldn't meet his eyes, and didn't move. He didn't argue, didn't say anything at all. He just stood there and didn't look, and after a moment Vesemir sort of sighed and shook his head and said he would go."

Cirilla falls silent, teeth digging into her lip, and Emhyr realizes that she, too, is trying to keep from giving away secrets that Emhyr might not already know.

"Because you were Geralt's," Emhyr says softly. "And what was Geralt's was Eskel's, and he would not abandon that responsibility to anyone, even a witcher he'd known all his life." 

Even if Eskel also could not bring himself to openly rebel against that authority; he had only been able to ask Vesemir, wordlessly, not to force the matter. And Vesemir--who must surely have seen what was between the two of them, if he'd known Geralt and Eskel as long as they'd known each other--had allowed it. Granting a blessing, of sorts, if an unspoken and perhaps unspeakable one. Geralt's first thought about a relationship with him had been, _Men don't_ , and he had spoken of his bond with Eskel defiantly, as something he should have outgrown. That had to reflect what he'd been taught--and Vesemir had been their teacher.

"Geralt told me," Emhyr adds, hoping to put Cirilla at her ease, "that he and Eskel have always been very close."

Cirilla relaxes a little at that. "They are, yes."

Emhyr nods, then says, "As close as Geralt and I are, now?"

Cirilla smiles knowingly. "Well, they were pretty firm about latching the door when they went to sleep at night, and they were almost always both in one room if they were both home. But it was--not that it wasn't real, because it was while it lasted. But them being _that_ close, all the time like that, I think was just because they both had a reason to be in one place for weeks and months at a time. I mean--I don't think Eskel would try to take Geralt away from you, or anything like that, other than to go out hunting for a while. He never said a word against Yen, or Triss."

Emhyr nods slowly. It's the same impression he himself had formed from what Geralt said, but Geralt had not mentioned the period when Eskel spent nine months of every year sharing Geralt's bed--sleeping close and talking in the dark and lying together, as Geralt might describe it--and helping to raise Geralt's daughter as if she were his own. Had Geralt asked for that support from him? Or had Eskel simply found it unthinkable to do less for his... Geralt?

It seems that neither Cirilla nor Geralt can, or will, tell him what he needs to know about just what it will cost him not to interfere between Geralt and the man Geralt wouldn't give up for Emhyr.

Which raises another question, though Emhyr suspects he knows the answer. "Speaking of Yennefer--have you found out why she and Geralt finally parted?"

Cirilla professed not to know before, but now that she knows he knows about Geralt's true bond with Eskel...

Cirilla blows out a breath and shakes her head. "It was always on the verge of happening, but it went so long not quite falling apart that it seemed like it never actually would. I guess maybe once they had nothing else to distract them, they finally figured out why that was. Geralt saving her life probably wasn't actually a good reason to spend the rest of their lives together, when it came to doing that every day."

So: neither Geralt nor Yennefer has let it be known that the final cause was Geralt's loyalty to Eskel. Emhyr wonders if anyone has told Eskel.

"Well. We shall have to ask Geralt if he'd like to invite Eskel for a visit, anyway."

Cirilla nods, seeming relieved to turn away from the question of Yennefer. "That's if he doesn't turn up on his own. He was getting pretty worried, the last time I caught up with him and he still hadn't seen Geralt. I told him I'd send a message for him to collect in Vizima, when I found Geralt and knew he was all right. I don't know if he's gotten there yet, but when he does he'll at least know where to find Geralt if he wants to see for himself. If he was quick about it he might be riding up the road any day now." 

Cirilla smiles, seeming pleased by the prospect, and Emhyr finds himself smiling back despite his reservations. He must face the man sooner or later, and Emhyr is nearly sure that Eskel will not press Geralt to choose between them, when he's spent all these years not objecting to Yennefer. If he does...

Well. Geralt is in Emhyr's bed today and will be tonight, and he's happy there, and Cirilla is happy with both of them. That's enough, for now.


End file.
